after the oil painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1836-1912

Time is a chamber, a willow. No, more tranquil than a willow. The sleeping eye of a newborn. We do not even sing. We read our favorite poets of the continent. Behind us, squares of light rest on the wall. The floor has a welcome chill that marble gives in the unexpected heat of April. The walls are lined with engraved copper sheets. The bronze colored window, which is not a window one sees through, but a window that swivels, opens to reveal a girl angel, out in the garden, spreading her wings atop a Doric column. It is a room of anticipation in which the words ballad, pledge, privilege, are whispered to a hush. A century we only hear about or watch from a postcard, such as I am doing now, telling you who we are and what we wish we were. How did we know to dress wearing the sheer spine of a dragonfly? Wearing, what so long ago, conjured up words like spells in a chamber, like a chamber in a locket, like a locket on a neck, like a neck long as the day, like a day of this lost time, of these faces full of light. And despite our youth, laughing had not occurred to us.