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Egyptian dancer

Slowly, with intention to tempt, she sidles out
 
(a smile and a shake of bells)
 
in silver, tight as a fish’s, and a web
 
of thin-flame veils, and her brown buttery flesh
 
(but she is a mermaid with twelve metal tails)
 
glimpsed or guessed by seconds.
 
 
 
Slowly the insidious unison sucks her in,
 
and the rhythm of the drums,
 
the mournful feline quavering whose pulse
 
runs through her limbs; shivering like a bride
 
she lifts her arms into a lyre; there comes
 
a sense of nakedness
 
 
 
as the red gauze floats off; and of release.
 
She is all silver-finned:
 
it hangs from wrist and ankle, she is silver—
 
feather-crowned, tight silver across the breasts;
 
skirt of bright strips; and where in the fat forced up
 
her navel winks like a wound.
 
 
 
The dance begins: she ripples like a curtain;
 
her arms are snakes
 
—she is all serpent, she coils on her own loins
 
and shakes the bells; her very breasts are alive
 
and writhing, and around the emphatic sex
 
her thighs are gimlets of oil.
 
 
 
All the half-naked body, as if tortured
 
or loving with a ghost,
 
labours; the arms are lifted to set free
 
atrocious lust or anguish, and the worms
 
that are fingers crack as croupe or bust
 
or belly rolls to the drums.
 
 
 
Wilder: the drift of the sand-spout the wavering
 
curve of the legs grow a blaze
 
and a storm while the obsession of music hammers and wails
 
to her dim eyes to her shrieking desire of the flesh
 
that is dumb with an ecstasy of movement and plays
 
fiercely the squirming act
 
 
 
and sweat breaks out she is bright as metal while the skirt
 
spins like a flower at her hips
 
into the last unbearable glorious agony
 
between the lips and suddenly, it is over:
 
a last groan of the drum, panting she drops
 
into the darkness of past love.

 
 
Dance Poetry
A comprehensive anthology
Edited by Alkis Raftis
Copyright 2012

©