Ballet of the Absurd

 

I

IT is absurd to watch a dancer

Standing when he might lie down,

Absurder still in a ballerina

(The absence of chairs is a defiance)

Teasing to watch these rebels against gravitation

Pirouetting in alliance

Similar satellites

Round the circumference of a shaken tambourine

Shrieking at their station.

II

Harmonious forms their very beauty rebellion

(Like their colours, rebels against Light,

Light logical, invisible, totalitarian).

In steps Flamingo, Ha ! what a wonder ! Rebellion

After violence in blue, and yellow

Breaks into primrose-pale, violet-faint, deeper-than-doom purple

(Darkness offering a pillow).

Horizontal in sleep lie the rainblow-apparelled.

Streaks in a Hunter in scarlet.

III

Shatter in what tones the unity of Silence ?

Noise, dispelled in the well-tempered clavichord

(A rebel against tone-purity),

Is posited in new logic and the art of fugue.

Houris dancing through the scales to Bach and Hindemith,

Colour invades their counterpointing limbs

With a double counterpoint ;

Against what background ?

Let us call to their aid Geometry !

IV

Circumventing the tombstones of Symmetry

Tip-toes Delight

In its multitude of shapes.

Stability and prity breaking-up gather into a new unity,

Its dream-soul, a ballet,

Like a crystal from the chaos of confusion

It gyrates

While the mind imprisoned in Ludus Tonalis

Consolidates.

V

Souls ! what are they ?

Here they are, see them fluttering,

Butterflies in the net of Gravitation

(The Spider with the world in his web),

Everywhere spirits waving in rebellion limbs, voices and antennae

Till materialiesd freedom incarcerates,

Fixes colour, form and intonation

Patterned upon the presented slate,

The Devil re-appearing in each imitation.

 

W. J. Turner