A pair of these tree plaques, hung on willow branches near a small pond, can be found in Finlay’s garden of Little Sparta. The single-word inscriptions, each a proper noun, are imperfect both homophones and anagrams of one another. “Osiers” – the tough supple branches of the osier willow, traditionally used for weaving baskets – and “Osiris” – the ancient Egyptian god of life, death and the flooding of the Nile as well as creator of agriculture – are now tangibly linked by sight, sound, proximity, shared ceramic material and name. The tree and the god are closely connected in Egyptian mythology, the willow being sacred to Osiris, a willow tree protectively growing up to shade Osiris’s coffin. Because the verbal, mythological and even physical association of “osiers” and “Osiris” is so pointed, multi-faceted and strong, the presence in Finlay’s garden of real osiers invokes the “real” presence of the god. It does not matter that Osiris is conjured metaphorically, so long as the imaging – the imagining – is sufficiently vivid and powerful. Little Sparta was in large part created to give us back, fully armed, non-literal meaning and thus the gods.