Cordoba

A mass of yellow stone
floating in the blue
of the clear, brilliant sky above
and the turbulent Guadalquivir below –
its enormous bulk
made weightless by the context.
Ottoman Cordoba was a univer-city,
a unverse with a small “u”.
A mess of cultures,
sweaty cross-fertilization –
exciting,
faintly indecent,
infinitly productive.
Not the golden mean of Aristotle,
not the measured path of restraint –
contorted co-mingling,
intertwined but not melded.
The way of Socrates –
clear contradiction that is growth
made stone.