Dancer

Her dancing dies as around a rose bush

Or a flute where the sad wind of Weber is played

Her ribboning feet twining in spirals

Her body drooping a wing-spread bird.

Bow violins . . . Fresh from bluest of water

Silvana comes, all flutter commotion.

Joyous living, wonder love at play

In her eyes, her breasts and her being reborn.

Her satin steps needle the patterns

Embroidering pleasure. My spendthrift eyes

Follow fatigued the springing girl. .

HELEN BURLIN'

But all in a flash, perfection ends;

By limb withdrawn too fast in leaping,

The hop of a frog in a Cytheran pond.

(To Mademoiselle Sanlaville)

What the delicious words of pantomime

And all of ballet's language, suave or spiced,

Feed to those that test the palate

Of a body's gesture, eloquent with no sound:

Who persists in seeing them in the woman endlessly

Fleeing, painted, tantalizing and forbidding,

The appetites of his soul slide by

More vividly than on the illuminated page.

All this, the dancer, limp as Atalanta, has,

And more; the nerve of grace, statement of muscle,

The mysterious, impenetrable alone to fools.

By this neglected grove, your perpetual art keeps watch;

A questioned or forgotten step calls you to mind,

And you appear to twick the ear of an old faun.

(To Mme. Caron, Brunhild of Siegried)

Your long and noble arms slowly raising sorrow

Or weighing humanity's ruth and rage,

Arrows released from the bow of a goddess

Twisting, astray, against the soil of error;

Your diadem gilding the pallid blush

Of the quiet Queen, her people's pawn,

The stage you trod, distressful woman,

In love, plundered and shameful of your grief.

And your voice so full, so divinely holding,

Having pronounced the sonorous warning,

Now winning Siegfried as destiny decreed;

This beauty will stay to the end of my days...

Should my eyes be blind and only hear,

Music will tell the gesture you made.