Afterimage

A reconstruction of the Palaikastro Kouros, from
"Resurrecting a Lost Minoan God," Billings Gazette,
October 2008.

If you sit and fix your attention on him, this
youthful god shaped from ivory and beaten
gold, you might forget he’d been shattered,
burnt, buried in a midden, forgotten. Keep
looking: keep your eyes open long enough,
for hours or days, and when you look away,
the god will still be with you—no longer a
dead god in chryselephantine, but alive in
dark midnight blue, a vision of the dancing
Krishna floating in the Minoan afterimage.