from A Palace for the Heart

The Steward's Testimony

          Leonhard Huber, attendant at Berg

Love, Ortega y Gasset would say, is fluid

and cannot be satisfied like desire.

We should take as our model a fountain

and not the watery remains of emotion

to which we have become so enraptured. The King was dead,

drowned, floating there in the lake. HIs doctor,

dead too, was near him. But why bother

with who it was that killed them,

whether the King killed himself, some contrivance

of plot? They looked so serene, the hard rain

had stopped if just for a moment. And look, I thought,

the King has left his coat and umbrella

on the bench. A night bird, perched somewhere

in the glistening upper limbs of a pine,

was about to sing. I don't know what else

I can tell you. He died for love, it was all over his face.

We all loved him, with the love of a Spanish philosopher.

And now, of course, the lake will never be the same.