John Hollander

“We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could.
No more walks in the wood.”
― John Hollander

“If the Garden has been properly laid out, there need not be a maze in it. For the quest, the puzzlement, the contingency of the place of rest with its bench and rosebushes in the center of it all, the ease of entrance and its welcoming entrapment, the problems of homing, will all have been provided by the Garden itself. And the maze's parable, unrolling beneath the hurrying feet of the last wanderers on a summer evening that now chills and darkens - the parable of how there can be no clarity of truth without puzzlement, no joy without losing one's way - will be propounded by the Garden's final perfection, namely, that in it is no trace of the designer, that no image of him can ever be found. He - you - will have disappeared into the ground of the place that had been made.”
― John Hollander, Harp Lake