Under the sun back at its height in June
a legless beggar spun round, dervish-wise,
frantic to catch the eye of us passersby
he made sidestep his limp, empty Levi’s
twisted in Smyrna’s cobblestoned agora
like Caesar’s limbs contorted by a seizure.

Winding up a stairway that turned above
the maze of streets into a honeycomb
of shops, we found a goldsmith in his cell
—behind locked doors & in the air-conditioned
isolation that glorifies the end
of this particular millennium—

& asked if he who could work miracles
would gild your hand-carved coral cameo
of Aphrodite in her bliss, a gift
commemorating thirty years intact.
Below, my guilt recalled, one still awaited
wild-eyed the miracle of some small change.