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Folk dance at Shinto shrine

The summer night, diluted black, pours itself diffuse
 
Beneath the giant trees in the lantern grove
 
Behind the Shinto shrine. An old victrola
 
Is cranked and screeches softly without echo
 
From the darkness. Short sliding steps of children
 
Shake the pavilion's bamboo stilts
 
In time, advancing and retreating, shimmering
 
The silk of outstretched arms in pink and red
 
Kimonos, like a firelit circle of flamingos reflected
 
Upsidedown in a rippling pond.
 
The motions hold the slender limbs in thrall, all
 
The awkwardly lovely tentative motions
 
Of children, unaccustomed to a stage. Soon they happily
 
Forget themselves in the confidence of adolescents
 
Who join the dance, and then they shouting
 
Pull down in little hands the joy of night
 
Into the bottom of the shimmering bowl that craters
 
High around them, closing in when the tall gowned
 
Figures of their parents form the outmost ring.
 
The priests in dark kimonos and black lacquered
 
Clogs look on and nod shaved heads, approving. One
 
Fans himself with an ivory fan and comments,
 
Wistfully, upon the gestures of the little children.
 
 
 
 

Murray Noss

 
 

 
 
Dance Poetry
A comprehensive anthology
Edited by Alkis Raftis
Copyright 2012

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