During a side trip from Rome, on the eastern side of Sardinia, Talia and I visit a grotto, 15 kilometers deep (only its first kilometer open to the public), crowded by stalagmites and stalactites hanging like colossal organ pipes made of taffy.
The stalagmites, which grow about one centimeter per century, remind me of La Sagrada Familia with its 18 spindle-shaped spires representing the Apostles, the Evangelists, the Virgin Mary, and the Big Dawg himself, Jesus Christ.
Like La Sagrada Familia, the grotto is stunning yet incomplete. A work-in-progress–stalactites still stretching, millimeter-by-millimeter; stalagmites, still climbing toward the sky.
La Sagrada Familia is like a big, bold and beautiful construction site and the Grotte del Bue Marino feels the same, except that this is nature’s project and she or he, like most geniuses, will never be done.
Hopefully.
An Italian tour guide who speaks English (and, apparently, a bunch of other languages) tells us:
- We will be walking through the grotto’s four “rooms.”
- Do not touch anything.
- The grotto is archaeologically-important because a Neolithic petroglyph representing a circle dance has been discovered on one of its walls.
- We will not get to see that petroglyph, BTW.
- The grotto is named after the bue marino, the “sea cow,” AKA the monk seal, who used to live on the island and birth its babies in the cave.
- The monk seal no longer lives on the island.
- People (including you) have scared the monk seal away.
- Did I mention not to touch anything?
Talia and I proceed through the grotto by ourselves, slightly ahead of the group of English-speakers (maybe six of them who are actually all European) and slightly behind the crowd of thirty or so Italians.
I marvel at the immensity and the coolness of the cave, the quietude, only broken by the occasional drop of water that hits the surface of the river that flows through it, forming small shallow pools lifeless beneath the surface. Just water. Quiet and sacred like a religious space, not unlike the interior of La Sagrada Familia itself and the museums and the places of worship that I have just visited in Rome.
It’s as if my presence is a secret between me and God or me and Nature, or whatever I believe in, and, oh, Talia.
In one of the grotto’s rooms, the one filled with stalactitic organ pipes, I joke that Talia should recite “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which she has memorized as a part of the program she has just completed in Rome.
She actually does recite it, and with dramatic flair and flourish to boot; it’s like her accent becomes vaguely-British although I know she’s from Florida!
And when she gets to the part:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit dities of no tone.
She points to the pipes around us and I laugh.
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweari-ed,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
In the cold cave, my face burns and my eyes fill with tears. The repetition of the word, “happy,” the speaker’s imploration of “happy, happy love!”
There, in the cave, it is that beautiful. It is true.
And I am PMSing.
And when Talia gets to the end:
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
We can’t help but laugh. I clap. Bravo! We are the crazy Americans who recite poetry in a cave, 15 kilometers deep, although we can access only the first one.