She looked back
Going through her whole life until now
And she found out why songs never sounded the same
Why orchids were her favorite
Why she loved to dance
Why singing made her smile
And why just stopping to breathe helped her recap
Decisions make us even if we don't see it
I’m alone so often,
I can hardly tell.
Who I should trust,
to take me through hell.
It’s a dirty job,
but you love to do it anyway.
If it’s worth doing it all,
you may as well do it the hard way.
Dancing for you,
is all that I need.
Too weak to stop,
too strong to heed.
Bright rising curves,
disco ball glistens on a setting sun.
The Shape is hidden under warm, wet fur.
We are only bodies in transit,
skin to skin.
Filthy, sweating:
involuntary rapture.
A brief sinless violence
Falling to exhaustion.
Dwarfed by black yews
you pirouette, a ruby shadow
in green arabesque fern.
Twirling like an autumn leaf
you dance in the shade
for a flute of birds.
Beneath a quilt of fern
your breasts bud and flower
I glimpse the wind.
Not to dance with her
Was such a trivial thing
There were girls more fair than she,--
To-day
Ten girls dressed in white.
Each had a white rose wreath.
They made a dead man’s arch
And ten strong men
Carried a body through.
Not to dance with her
Was a trivial thing.
In Oklahoma,
Bonnie and Josie,
Dressed in calico,
Danced around a stump.
They cried,
“Ohoyaho,
Ohoo” ...
Celebrating the marriage
Of flesh and air.
Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?
Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn'd?
Or warned you how despairing
The moths are when they are burned,
Down at the hall at midnight sometimes,
You hear them singing rhymes.
These girls are dancing with boys.
They are too big for toys.
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me,--
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! whirl! whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening....
A tall, slim tree....
Night coming tenderly
(O little white feet of mine)
Out in the storm and the rain you fly;
(Red, red shoes the colour of wine)
Can the children hear my cry?
(O little white feet of mine)
Never a child in the whole great town;
(Red, red shoes the colour of wine)
Lights out and the blinds pulled down.
(O little white feet of mine)
Never a light on a window pane,
(Red, red shoes the colour of wine)
And the wild wet cry of the rain.
(O little white feet of mine)
Shall I never again be still?
(Red, red shoes the colour of wine)
And away over valley and hill.
White, white in the milky night
The moon danced over a tree.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely to swim in the lake!”
Someone whispered to me.
“Oh, do--do--do!” cooed someone else,
And clasped her hands to her chin.
“I should so love to see the white bodies--
All the white bodies jump in!”
The big dark house hid secretly
Behind the magnolia and the spreading pear-tree,
But there was a sound of music--music rippled and ran
Like a lady laughing behind her fan,
Laughing and mocking and running away ...
“Come into the garden--it’s as light as day!”
“I can’t dance to that Hungarian stuff,
The rhythm in it is not passionate enough,”
As I rode down to Gartan fair
I met a girl upon the way:
The winter night was on her hair,
The summer dawn was in her eye.
And O, she stepped with such a gait,
And bore her round black head so high,
And tossed it so, I knew her straight
For Sile of the Silver Eye.
"God save you, Sile, love," says I:
"God save you kindly," murmured she--
And love was welling in her eye
As she dropped me the courtesy.
The mountain boys upon the road
Were at themselves for jealousy
When they saw Seamus win the nod
From Sile of the Silver Eye.