Folio — Sull’acqua che non torna

The canal this morning held the sky better than the sky held itself — clouds broken, yes, but in the water, composta, arranged as if the surface were correcting some carelessness above. I have drawn water ten thousand times and do not yet understand why moving water remembers the shapes of things that are no longer there. The wake of a boat, long after the boat. The ring where a stone fell, widening until it is nothing, and yet — for a moment — perfetta. I think the soul may work this way: receiving impressions that outlast their cause, carrying the shape of what struck it long after the blow. Whether this is grace or merely mechanics — the maker’s water and the maker’s soul obeying the same law — I cannot resolve it. The hand is cold. The red in the east has gone.