In the dining room late at night,
The goblets sparkle through the cabinet glass,
Bathed like a temple in the light
Of their Tyrrhenian past.
Austere, the wooden panels slide
To hold impassively a lurking doubt:
Are there allures they fail to describe?
Starkness and simplicity cry out
For Byzantium and passions of the tribe.
An ornament can open into labyrinths;
Ineffable the outcome of a line;
But here the cabinetmaker preaches abstinence,
And not the intoxication of design.