Rumor of Cortez

Entering this room,

81 Entering this room, you can’t help thinking, I am a set of orchid vases, or the orchids themselves, clustered and supplicating. I am, you think, one-quarter handblown glass—enough to set for six guests or ten. Surely this part of me was fired in the Philippines then cooled in the rain by women who despite their age were not unused to dance. I am velum, I think, for dreaming, I am rice pearls strung and clasped with a silver heart in place of the old one, worn, grown tired and better off this way. I woe-is-me before the you must leave the room, now thought, you think, leave it now—too dangerous, you think, it is too, you think, much of you. ...