An Exceptional Design

Snakes and scorpions remain fearful of the Indian peacock, its aplomb like Frank Gehry’s wiggle chair. Wiggle room is for wimps, the purity of the open air needed for antelopes to gambol free. Crushed by heat, the dakinis are raking up the past like dead leaves, the field of fiction another involvement in the love, in its yen for a simpler time. Those were good years of the most ample view, no flattening depictions, none of their dry wit to make vinegar of everything. No relapses into the smug and overworking moralistic. No overstepping into the Pyrenees where these earthy things, and not others, find their happy, eternal place. Chiyo Afanasy has Byrne by the hand and leads him down the asphalt to the old macadam road: “Hush, street hawkers, I want to understand the calling / of the conductor in repose. / There you go your way, unknown and mellow / in spirit / Above your bodies flying / these sad-eyed whispers / like music from one kissing gate to another.” On a patio is the box-spring cleaning itself off for the dakinis. They intend to make a go-cart of it and visit the dugongs halfway. “For supper,” the dugongs insist, “off Manitoulin Island where the trees still make their own garlands.”