But it should not have closed with an exclamation point. Perhaps it did not! My memory is at fault. There is no need of blowing a trumpet after such a line.
Silvá, like Venice, is a phantom of delight, I can never forget. He was an exquisite, on a level with Petronius, and he lived in a city to which patrician memories and the royal pride, of that royal race, the Spanish, had been transplanted, Bogotá.
He loved butterflies and childhood and the first early nights of May; fleeting things, light lovelinesses which pause only long enough to die. He loved the flight of swallows which he liked to call the wings of Spring.
I have read verses of his which give me exactly the same sensation as verses of the Greek Anthology.
Old windows were another passion of his. Very frequently occur the words, vieja ventana.
En la estrecha calle una muy vieja ventana colonial
Penetrando al traves de los rejas
de antigua ventana
El cantor ...