Speaking of carpets

When the guys in 'Nooga were flipping their wares for us, I had a moment in time, considering how long how many vendors had done just this -- beckoning, blandishing, spinning tales about their wares, sizing up their customers, bargaining, closing the sale.

I thought of one of Amanda's pieces that's now in Key West, and was sorry I couldn't share it with them -- though I do now.

Its twin was on the Roadshow a few years ago. It's about 6 inches high, spelter, polychrome, probably from Vienna in the '20s. It speaks: "I have this treasure for you."

And I think of Rilke in the same era:

Angel: if there were a place we know nothing of, and there,

on some unsayable carpet, lovers revealed

what here they could never master, their high daring

figures of heart’s flight,

their towers of desire, their ladders,

long since standing where there was no ground, leaning,

trembling, on each other – and mastered them,

in front of the circle of watchers, the countless, soundless dead:

Would these not fling their last, ever-saved,

ever-hidden, unknown to us, eternally

valid coins of happiness in front of the finally

truly smiling pair on the silent

carpet?