Re-Run

I was that dancer. On the screen

Dances again who once was I

Head Grecian-curled and lean, the lean

Pectoral Hardness and his hard thigh.

Strident across the film in great

Loves of leaping, in whirls, in slow

Erectile pause of weightless weight

Perfected twenty years ago.

They often re-run. I save to sit

And spy upon the youth who had

Youth without its opposite,

Promise therefore that went bad.

See how he dances ignorance

Of childhood and of you and me;

Half-naked, full magnificence,

He spins before a moonlit sea

Whose tones orchestral and perverse

Whisper, snarl of the sound-track;

But all are caught around those terse

Hips and within that stallion back

To stiff finalities of strength

Feet thundering at the horn’s cry,

Until the plot extrudes its length

When in the movie he must die.

Winfield Townley Scott