See That Finely Latticed Dress — Both a Password and a Magic Spell

At last I noticed — but only after
Seeing a rich belle époque woman’s dress —
How ladies and goddesses approached
In long, well-woven, swelling mesh

The lords and their nether mates
In ancient Egypt, the Land of Ka,
Where even serpents, it seems,
Grew wings upon their backs.

So why the mesh? Wasn’t that too
Leucothea’s shroud, in which the woman
Who died to her former mortal frame
Wrapped and held a drowning Odysseus?

And does one not meet the same enigma
When brooding late at night
Over questions no one else would ask,

In Greek and Cretan Dictynna —

The Goddess of the Fishing Nets,
In whose eyes she herself was saved,
And a god became ensnared
As though no more than little game?

So is it some secret thing,
Small and arcane,
Which women alone may have known:

That whether to man or to god,
They come best in nets —

In nets with so many eyes
That even Argus Panoptes
Would be put to rout and shame.

And all those eyes — so many
Ivory and hollow-horned gates.