Peaking Too Soon

° How blest are they who are popped out and reared in a tarpapered orange crate, or, more fortunate still, they who are whelped by a tenderhearted crack ho in some midwinter backalley of Gotham Ghetto.
° For they can scarcely go downhill from either beginning.

§

° Poor me, I was clinically delivered, not even midwived.
° And just look at the first garden I lived in. Tenfoot high, threefoot thick brokenglasstopped walls around the entire convent. Arbours, immaculately spaded gravel paths, palms, lemons, a sustaining kitchengarden to the side. Only one entry (the double doors were never opened in my time), and that guarded by a lay sister, summoned by a buzzer night or day, no curfew, she never slept.

° Just look at late winter: an extensive border of frostresistant beefsteak begonias. In fact it’s bergenia (mostly) in thick pink bloom. Look closer, and see the Italian arum intermingling. ((My one attempt at bergenia purpurascens here in the Valley perished without comment. But the arum is tough as shoeleather.))

° Across the street, the parish church.
° It was scarcely a century old, and by no means good enough for us. Nearby San Pietro in Montorio would’ve done, but it was forever in restauro.
° So S. Maria in Trastevere, and, for musick lovers, S. Cecilia were our tutelary temples.

§§§§§

° Years later I found a second toogoodtobetrue dwellingplace: my Austrian friend Riccardo’s flat in the attic of a palazzo overlooking Piazzale Flaminio. One could peer out the window and imaginarily look clear down Via del Babuino to the Propaganda della Fede, or clear down the Corso to Vittorio Emanuele, or clear down Via di Ripetta to the Tiber.
° For garden there was Villa Borghese.
° For parish church, S. Maria del Popolo.
° For caffè, the one on the left.
° For playground, Rome, Romulus’s Rome, Catullus’s Rome, Julian’s Rome, Barbarian Rome, Papal Rome, Risorgimento Rome, Rome.

§

° I wonder does he still hold the lease, Riccardo?

° Timetravelling, Giac.