IN PHRYGIA, BIRTHPLACE OF EMBROIDERY

When Midas, no less deserving of mercy or better for

being a king dope, had lost all faith in the gods,

either they or their haughty absence sent him metaphor,

an ever-commencing order that can resemble a philosophy

but is more charming faster, like a bird that stars into flight,

like rhyme, its junior, like edgings of the clinker-built sea—

The gold was a symbol, like a need to prize things. I’m smarter

now! he cried. I’m enlightened, as befits a great king!

My silver age will not seize the taramasalata!

But his court worked like stuff he’d learned through nonhuman ears

and like a gold effigy entitled The Hug his first daughter

stood in the strongroom. Age was like age, tears like tears,

his palace equalled his design for it, and looked no nobler tiled,

his desire for slave girls was like when he could slake it,

his wife was like an aged queen, and his heir like a child.