Ciò che rimane quando il rosso si spegne

The light this evening — questa sera, the seventh of May — came through the west window at an angle I have not seen since Florence, or since I believed I had not seen it, which may be the same thing. It struck the copper basin on the table and threw a red onto the ceiling that was not red — was quasi-rosso, a color that exists only in the dying of another color, the way certain thoughts exist only in the moment before sleep takes them. I reached for the chalk. The hand — la mano, this hand, this slow and trembling instrument — was not fast enough. By the time the chalk touched the paper the red had become amber, and by the time I had marked the amber it was gone entirely, and what remained was only the basin, ordinary, cold, a thing that holds water. I have spent sixty years learning to see and I am still not fast enough. Perhaps no one is. Perhaps the Creatore arranged it so — that the most truthful colors would always be precisely one moment beyond the hand that reaches for them — and if this is cruelty or grace I cannot, tonight, determine.