Ballet

 

And taller than himself Sinbad stood, dizzy

Like a man whose previous existence

Has been a trap on his desires and love

To which he suddenly commits himself.

Under his feet he saw the painted segments

Of the world's dancing floor, ornate, all aglow

With pools of polished stone, where chariots

Heeled from new angles, and icicle fins

Of fish brushed submarine surfaces.

But in the unreal fires and gold clouds

There moved, harsher than any artist made,

The lights of girls' limbs inverse.

At which image he cried out sharply

(He remembered for a moment the other life,

The thick tree, night, the touch of untouched hair,

And the wet cicatrix of love)

And pain compelled his gaze to the people

The dancers. Amazed he discovered there,

Laughter, sung in the eyes, against

The whole philosophy of the painters

Who say the eyes are the sad point,

The human relic, the lost paradise.

Then caught in the discovery and dance

Sinbad shouted: "I revoke the years

When the thing of faintest effort would do.

I will live in coral rooms and labyrinths

As boys imagine them, and only aim

At passions of great name." Naxos and the floes

Of many islands respired for him

Like autonomous organs or prime sea matter.

His decision is knit with some of the dances

Which won him, defending the archaic pleasure

Before the prophets mapped the hair of shame.

But there are rational dances, never played

By Ariadne in her bosked colonnade,

Rational figures that simply illustrate

How love in its coming can be decoyed

By manoeuvring or by care, but in departure

Love can never be forewknown or stayed.

 

Herbert Howarth