The Golden Age

is thought to be a confession, won by endless torture, but which our interrogators must hate to record—all those old code names, dates, the standard narrative of sandpaper throats, even its remorse, fall ignored. Far away, a late (not lost) messenger stares, struck by window bargains or is it the gift of a sudden solicitude: is she going to lift up her shadow's weight, shift hers onto it? She knows who bears whom. In that momentary museum where memory occurs more accrue of those torturers' pincers than lessened fingernails, eyes teased to a pulp, we beg for closeups. Ormolus, objets d'art! A satyr drains an hourglass with one gulp.