One: The Serpent says…
It is All Hallows Eve.
The Serpent says: this is the surface of an uncertain body, and its skin is tattooed with previously unwritten utterances, the fragments of a lost whole. A leaf pattern disguises the scaly hide; nevertheless, the body of The Serpent can be traced through the leaves. A second head complicates the tracing of the line, but there is only one Serpent. He (for it is a He) is content in the foliage, waiting patiently.
All I need is a library and a garden. Cicero said something like that. That’s it: the whole thing, all of it. This is a wise observation.
What he actually said, just three years before his execution in 43 BCE, in a letter to his friend Varro was:
“If you have a garden in your library everything will be complete.”
The Serpent is coiled within the Garden. This is where he lies.
This text is a fragment of a leaf of a book, found on a shelf in the Library, within which lies the Garden.
Something unexpected may happen at the threshold, perhaps where the sunlight penetrates the dark of the Library…in the meantime, the sun warms the stone floor.
