
I
What is a waltz – but the life of a flower,
But the whole life of Spring passing in a flower…
Or a gaze seeking a heart to fall in and sleep at last,
Or an evening slipping out of the windows, merging into the night,
Or a glass slipper lying waiting on the staircase of a ballroom,
Or a question asked again and again
Only for the answer to be felt again and again.
But who stays to answer your being? Nothing
Who goes? Everything
What lasts? The final waltz of this flying moment.
II
Candles burn, sewn to the winds,
Silk swishing the marble floor;
Arm to arm the perfumes slip,
Neck to neck turns the waiting…
Who soothes the longing? The one who arranged it;
Who ends the night? The heart in which the music runs…
The answer comes not from afar,
But from the pulse of the question;
So don’t you think, all this looking elsewhere
Is getting nowhere?
And you hide, you masquerade, you cover your longing,
As if in a war with yourself, you your own enemy behind the veils…
And all this for but a whiff of life and the memory of it,
Till your feet are dragged across the hearth at last.
III
Oh, how you burn! And in dying, burn! In returning, burn!
Each time you arrive at the party dressed in white –
White, not of your surrender, but of your hopeless heart;
Will he? Won’t he? You pluck the layers of the rose,
But the rose had another meaning you let escape…
You bend and arch and swoon and swirl,
But it was you that set the stage: Whole civilizations!
A thousand languages! Perspectives as many as eyes!
And gestures at every rise and fall of a breath…!
And how many times! Ask! And ask – Why?
So to dance every dance! So to take every hand!
So to love yourself in every heart!
But don’t you see, it’s you? You waiting to meet you!
Glass by amber glass, you drink yourself, don’t you see?
IV
Let the waltz begin! Take centre, don’t wait anymore, and –
Turn! And turn again, and look at your love
In a million eyes, staring back at you…!
For it’s your hunger! Your dance! Your music!
You laid the oceans, the sands, for your meeting with you!
So won’t you let this waltz shred open your soul,
To that last fleck where you are nothing
But just your vulnerability and its knowing?
Where you slip like a bow on the strings of your own unprotected heart?
Oh, won’t you open the door and enter this waltz?
Won’t you give it your all and let this dance be the one
Where you wear your deepest red and surrender?
And dissolve into the unreserved pull of this music,
And become the waltz?
***