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The Bayadères
They breathe. They live. Behold the Bayadères!
The steps fill with dancing girls. The dark doors glitter.
They come down, soundless, from the corridors,
Golden winged, bare foot, with the red drug dyed
To feet of rose petals, noiseless on the stone;
Their faces, powdered white, to be the lotus petal,
Pale and expressionless, not twelve years old,
In high tiaras, jasmine scented towers,
Shedding down sweetness, motionless of feet,
Dancing with arms and hands, from wasp fine waists.
The action in their wrists and in their flowering fingers
Is tragedy in little, death hovering on life,
Love’s interludes, and daemonic war;
Love, laid for the serpent, the voluptuous Naga,
To please him with graces, with snake-like postures
That melt into others as a chain of pleasure,
One lovelier than another, while the feet keep still.
The Bayadères, the sacred ballerinas,
Temple hierats, goddesses of jasmine,
Throng the corridors, waiting for the trumpet.
How lovely a Bayadère beside her image,
As like as in water, in the lily tank,
Like her in height, the very height to lift,
With saffron skin, and supple as the snake
But warm, warm of flesh, yet with no bones to break,
Trained up for pleasure as the vine upon the trellis,
Her blossom, that pleasure, but flowering for that.
Were ever such dancers seen, waiting in the wings,
Beside their stone images, down corridors of shade?
But it is not all warriors and sparks of war.
The Bayadères, the sacred ballerinas,
Dance on the terraces, a play begins:
They sway like young trees with wind upon their leaves
In an airy rapture, as if they waved bright wings,
Long golden sleeves, and floated on the breath
In jasmined towers: yet, rooted to the ground,
They stay, like the tree foot: the dance is in the boughs,
In the tender leaves, a drama of the hands
With the wrist for another waist, like living flowers
They act with their fingers: these tragedies, in little,
Are subtle and grandiose, of wars with Hell,
Or Indian legends and the lotus calm,
Lovers made happy, or mourning in the woods,
Counselled by the serpent, and with Naga wisdom
Luring their maidens to the lily tank,
Where noon is shaded, till the lilies close.
It is but the prelude, and the drama comes:
These are but tyros: the priestess of the god,
His sacred dancer, the pleasure of the Naga,
In dust of sandalwood, in scented sawdust,
Painted and gilded, shaken like a cloud,
Shedding down fragrance, till no dust is left:
A naked Bayadère, but dressed in pearls,
Nothing but pearls and jasmine in her hair,
Walks to the midst of them and kneels upon the stage.
Her colour is saffron, she is smooth and golden,
Ripening to apricot; her powder falls,
The gilding fades; and the trembling of the jasmine
Tells her movements, her blossoming of hands;
All the Indian heat, and Indian languor of the shade
Plays in her fingers; not sighing, nor yet speaking,
She mimes the hot hours; but too late, too late;
This India, trembling in its four faced towers,
Dies in a summer down to ruin, and is lost.
Its walls were presumptuous, tapestried with war,
But this did no wrong, it was the pleasures of the dance,
The Naga come up through the lily pools
To reign on earth, that ended all the noons,
The long lulls of dancing, and the moonlit pauses.
If that was a little ghost, she died for love
To please the serpent, and gentle as a petal
Died with dumb lips before the jasmine faded.
The world has four winds: O look upon these towers
Crowned with four faces, with the same set smile
Smiling to the winds!
What do they mean!
With downcast looks, with heavy lidded eyes:
With thick lips smiling: not sleeping, nor awake?
Seek not their wisdom, but pass on, pass on!
Sacheverell Sitwell