The paintings were so famous they shook
the man’s eyes. His face was a miniature
fanfare anointing a halcyon sky. “The red
of the prince’s robes means love,” the docent started.
“Sex and love,” the man corrected. The tour
of global arts went on this way: history,
sex, love, war, death. Each room was a tomb
of facts, an age of worship caught
in a lockbox where the centuries don’t change. Later,
the man said “harder.” I hit him harder.
The light bled. Framed by blue curtains, the bedroom
looked unheroic, fleeting, the noisy street outside
alive, as usual, a clatter of another city’s ghosts.