the phallic) context made clear in the final line. And there are other correspondences. "Candlemaker" immediately follows "When She Was Nine," an account of a girl "slumped in her wedding dress, / half a woman, / the swellings of her breasts / not quite swellings yet" watching the ritual sacrifice of a goat. Her perspective is obliquely yet graphically rendered: "She cried under the white net / of her wedding veil over the slaughtered goat / at her threshold, the blood staining its hairy throat." Also, the Rumi excerpts that begin this section further complicate "Candlemaker's" tone: "When lovers moan, / they're telling our story. Like this. . . . When someone asks you what there is to do, / light the candle in his hand. / Like this." "Dates," which opens section three of "Sleep," is again a treat for the ears with its unassuming, precise language. It's amazing how Atefat-Peckham milks music from so many monosyllabic words: "Three days and they wrapped / his washed body in muslin, / no lumbering sounds of coffins / carried, only the white ripple / of cloth." However, what most intrigues me about this poem are its twin ambiguities of religious and secular mystery, realized in image and metaphor: ". . . the woman / with dates walked the aisles / offering the shriveled skin / and its sweet stench on a silver tray, / . . . Somewhere under / Iranian earth, seamless cloth lay / on its side, a turned