A transient friend

At first glance, he seems merely playful and charming, although remarkable for his exquisite and unerring artistry and perfect decorum. He is a love poem on the carpe diem theme- seize the day, time is fleeting, make love now. But his range is much wider than sometimes recognized. He moves from the pastoral to the cynical, from an almost rococo elegance to coarse, even vulgar, epigrams, and from the didactic to the dramatic. He also derives mythic energy and power from certain recurring motifs in life.

One is metamorphosis, the transience of all natural things. Another is celebration, evoking the social, ritualistic, and even anthropological significances and energies contained in modern life.

He is classical, but also perennial in his ideals about the good life defined as clean wantonness. He activates love devoid of high passion; the pleasures of food, drink, and song; delight in the beauty of surfaces; and finally, the creation of music as a ballast against the ravages of time.

He seems almost oblivious to the catastrophes of eternal love lost, but celebrates the kind of life that was at the center of ancient wars between pride and prized possessions.

He is my best friend.