Ciclo CXIX

The swallows have returned to the eaves of the château, and I watch them from the window where the light falls best in the late afternoon — that hour when the shadows of the courtyard stones grow long and the pigeons settle into their grey assemblies on the ridge tiles. They build with such urgency, such certainty of purpose, carrying mud and straw in beaks no larger than a child’s fingernail. I have drawn them many times, and still the angle of the wing at the moment of landing eludes me — not because it is too fast, but because each time I think I have fixed it, the bird does something I did not expect, some small correction of the tail, some tilt that is not in my drawing. Così è sempre. The creature knows what it does without knowing that it knows. I, who must know that I know in order to do anything at all, am left behind, chasing the wing with charcoal that smudges even as it records. Perhaps the Maker gave them a grace He withheld from us — the grace of unreflecting motion, the gift of being wholly inside the act. My hand trembles more today. The page forgives.