Mineral Baths - Bursa, Turkey

By Ford, Frank Bernard

Steam lifts
                to the rotunda, its
          art of running arabesques
                around windows thick and old,
                        aswarm
with aurioles.
                        Down
here the men soon draw                 apart, spurning visionary air
                        for
modesty. The wives           within their separate rooms

                play fast and loose
                                                                        with
luminosity,

stream in flesh
                        inseparable
              from light.

Paradise may be a place
                                        we
never know

                 where things leave off.
                                I
know a mo-                                                                       ment
swims in

                sight, those misted baths
in Bursa where Woman flows
                                                        as
light.