Consider, she said, the statue
in the cloister seen on Tuesday: fluted pilasters
and conch shells. Oh, pretty, pretty. A shaved forehead,
tight belt, missing limb.
Oh, crippled. Yes, very crippled. But not very real.
Louise took the train
of her black velvet dress and leaned across the table.
She was telling the story of small cars.
The tale concerned a dog with a tiny blue fez,
a girl named Clara who caught the trail of a smoky cigar
and followed it into catastrophe, a zoo
of undue proportion,
a small green car that ran up a line on a cheek
that had lain on a bedsheet too long.
It ended with the window that opened in, opening out
onto the end of looking. There, she said, the sky is
whatever one wishes. As she spoke,
the intangible drifted out beyond the vast
until it could no longer be seen but was still vaguely perceived—
and nowhere in the sensuous world a cause.