after nine hundred years of failure

Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
They asked him what he meant by garden.
He explained about gardens. "In the cities,"
he said, "there are places walled off where color
and decorum are magnified into a civilization.
Like a beautiful woman," he said. How like
a woman, they asked. He remembered their wives
and said garden was just a figure of speech,
then called for drinks all around. Two rounds later
he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne
couldn't read but still made a world. About Hagia
Sophia and putting a round dome on a square
base after nine hundred years of failure.
The hand holding him slipped and he fell.
"White stone in the white sunlight," he said
as they picked him up. "Not the great fires
built on the edge of the world." His voice grew
fainter as they carried him away. "Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all."

—Jack Gilbert (b. 1925), "Ovid in Tears," from The Dance Most of All, 2009.

In all honesty, the poem I wanted to post today was Derek Walcott's Sea Grapes, which is a poem that sometimes haunts me by virtue of being absolutely stunning, and that I kind of want to post every year because I love it so much; but I posted "Sea Grapes" in 2009, and I try not to repeat myself. This is a very different poem, but, well. Jack Gilbert on Ovid is very relevant to my interests.