and trousers, holding in his right hand the golden shoulder of a calf, which is the Bear that moves and turns back heaven, rising and sinking by the hour. Then you will see, from his eyes, lightnings, and from his body, stars leaping.

One word remakes the whole vision: anaxyrídes, trousers. No Greek wore them; on vases and reliefs they were how you drew a Persian. The golden-haired solar youth of the previous line is now, unmistakably, dressed as Mithras — the Persian god the whole liturgy is named for, shown on a thousand cult reliefs in exactly this costume. The face at the top of the ladder is an Eastern face. And what he carries is a piece of precise, strange astronomy. In his right hand is 'the golden shoulder of a calf,' and the text tells you flatly: 'this is the Árktos' — the Great Bear. The Egyptians pictured the seven circumpolar stars we call the Big Dipper as the foreleg or thigh of a bull-god, the lever by which the sky is cranked round; the Greeks called the same stars the Bear. Here both names sit on one object in the god's fist — the constellation that 'moves and turns back the heaven, rising and sinking by the hour.' He is not merely at the pole; he holds the handle of the turning cosmos. And then the tell that he is no statue: lightnings from the eyes, stars leaping off the skin. A body made of sky.