Nijinsky

Parker Tyler

The dive could come who was its fledgling first
Of wings that feathered ankles and stood up
And leapt and wide in the deep air immersed
The body that came down as soul went up
And taught the throat the foremost wind: and back
The living blood curved in the fluid hand
Whose fingers paused, and poised: the deadened slack
Was time's who stopped to see a dancer stand
Where sky was... There was God, where man was not
And heat in the heaving heart that moved alone
And left like a lover the still, praying spot
To surge where there were only air and bone
But once, as a mere odor comes and goes,
Dream: and the great anthropomorphic rose.