Pediment: Ballet

Music can not stay

But there’s a way

To fix and save

Its flowing-

By marbled motion in a frieze,

In eave above the architrave,

Of figures poising and at ease

With discs for throwing.

But here, today,

Marble to music comes again,

Statues to men . . .

these dancers have been brave

Beyond their knowing.

For men to pose

As statues at their play

Is strangely far more beautiful,

More strong to pull

The cord of terror taut,

Than that a statue can

Be like a man.

Why?

What does it signify?

And no one knows.

This sculpture lives:

The discus thrower really throws.

The flying javelin is caught

But not before it gives,

In unaccounted ways,

A wound which will not mend.

Marble to music come again,

Statues to men,

And statues’ shadows moving . . .

Proving

That all is music in the end

And only music stays.

Nicholl, Louise Townsend