A Conversation between Willa Muir, Rudolph
Nureyev, and Ned O’Gorman about Excess
Nureyev. How many leaps within the leap?
Willa. Let the end of the thing done
be the leap to the crossed beams of white light.
Nureyev. I shall leap twice into the crossed beams
of white light. Within the rudimentary leap
I shall etch two uncaused fluted turns.
Willa. No. Do not hitch eight horses
to a four-horse carriage.
Two uncaused fluted turns
is eight horses.
Nureyev. Had I no legs, no arms, no
triggered thigh and arch
I’d leap through hoops,
not through crossed
white beams of light
that span the middle of the scene.
Ned. We are grafted to excess.
Beat alphabet get a vine.
Beat vine get a lion.
Willa. Vines and lions are eight horses.
Nureyev. I’ll climb vines and ride lions
as the bull-dancers rode their
fancy bulls through Cretan stockyards.
Willa. Excess drains blood of salt and bread.
Edwin cooked excess.
It did not cook him.
It cooks you both.
Nureyev. (Ascending)
I cook space.
I eat the savory meal of over and above.
I make simplicity from what is ripe,
and take from abundance and return it chaste
and recollected.
Willa. The shaft bends. The wheels cannot pull out
of the mud. The beasts confused by
force beyond the reins’ strength twist back
the hub and spokes and pull the rings
straight at their foaming mouths.
Ned. I hear a rhyme
descending.
Nureyev. (Descends)
Willa. The superstructure keels.
Form has run amuck
with the orbs.
Ned. Abundance scooped from abundance
yields abundance.
At the incidence where fancy and
excess appease the accidents of form
we
begin.
Nureyev. (He lands.)
Ned O’Gorman