My Perfect Moment

Is there such a thing as the perfect moment, for that which is perfect is immediately corrupted by the passage of time? But it is the very fact that it is so transient, so vulnerable that arguably makes for perfection. I’ve had, I suppose, several interludes that I would consider perfect or near perfect. The most memorable, as I said here recently, was in a chestnut grove in the Palace of Versailles, a day in September. It was wonderfully still, warm, but with slight scent of decay and change in the air. There we sat, talking, drinking wine and holding hands. I will always remember.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.