the dreamy fetish of some man rich beyond measure or

purpose raised to such elegant tomfoolery it fills us with

delight, the way the museum’s one prize possession, a life-sized

mechanical silver swan, fills us with delight each time the key is

turned and the bird arches his stiff and handsome neck over

and claps from the mirror that makes his pretty bed a silver

fish, and swallows it, as if he were swallowing a sword, or fire—

making us laugh each time without fail, as if we, too, were fed

on silver fish, or the gardener’s sprinklers had just shot on, or

some fool rabbit were rocketing away from an imaginery

hound for the sheer deranged pleasure of it;

heavy as twin deer, the arms held out as an offering for the stone

woman, who may, for all we know, be a goddess, for all we

know, so old she is, so high above;

or heavy as coffers carved in the shape of deer, full of pearls and

coins, and inlaid with cobalt and ivory patterns, like the

patterns inside the dome of the mosque, mosaics in dark blue,

and lighter blue, and white, or the dome of heaven, dead heavy

with the jewels of heaven, or the Sea of Marmara, the moving

patterns of the waves, the vast mosaic of scent and sound, fish

oil and salt, blood and honey tangled with voices calling people

to prayer and the brutal gulls’ cries and the endless sighs of

shadows slipping across the grass;

heavy the arms, and heavy the arms’ white gleam—

the gleam of snowberries, or eyes veiled over and gifted with second

sight, or smoke from burning roses, or the scrolls of the altar

wrapped in snowy wool, or the fairest flesh of the fairest child,

born to be king, and carried into the dark trees by one brave

and foolish woman who will later be punished as thieves are

punished, but always her smile will hover in the air, as it

hovered over the child, the way we hover over the past, bring it

to life, or find, to our surprise, that it has a life of its own,

turning and turning in space;

all the imaginings, sweet god, the many arms of the mind, the

many-mindedness of the spirit descending upon itself, making

a fullness that seeks entrance and when entrance is found

unable—like water driven up from below—to resist the

opening, and so it shoots out, a blossoming of sparrows gone

mad, making a blessing, the soft spatter of the fountain’s water

upon water in the dead of the afternoon, and one sleeps, and

then wakes, damp, as if bathed in the sweat of the lover, after

dreaming of this or that, a darkness through which something

white floats, a drowned boy, or lilies, or the languid notes of an

ivory harp, or clouds of perfumed incense, or twin fawns