"Pas de Trois" - poem

[dirac]

Three dancers under music's orders stand

held by the touch of silence for a moment

posing. Now somewhere the flutes' sound

lifts the enchantment. Easily unbound,

they begin to move like plants and nod slowly,

their three heads like blooms:  their tendril hands

 

describe the shapes of air. The slender feet

on points of strength such as grass has,

gently to divide the strength of stone,

make them like gods miraculously borne:

Sonia,Tania, Katia, svelte deities

who sign to us and whom we may not greet.

 

Theirs is a craft of quiet,

they are shades of an old time

when you could hear, no riot

intervening, intricate and frail rhyme

and music; men had leisure

to ornament, only for pure pleasure,

their utensils and their life;

to live an hour or make a knife

intent on every jewelled space.

 

This is why they interlace

their fragile hands and dance their pace

of three before your ordinary face.

 

 -- Keith Douglas

[choriamb]

It's so lovely to be introduced to a new poet to read:  thank you for this, dirac.

[Quiggin]

Quote

men had leisure

to ornament, only for pure pleasure,

their utensils and their life;

to live an hour or make a knife

intent on every jewelled space.

 

Thanks for posting that, I hadn't read Douglas before. Here's a not quite matching poem I just came across by his contemporary Louis MacNeice. 

 

Les Sylphides 

 

Quote

  Calyx upon calyx, Canterbury bells in the breeze

                        The flowers on the left mirrored to the flowers on the right

                                    And the naked arms above

                                    The powdered faces moving

                                    Like seaweed in a pool.

 

                        Now, he thought, we are floating – ageless, oarless –

                        Now there is no separation, from now on

                                    You will be wearing white

                                    Satin and a red sash

                                    Under the waltzing trees.

 

                        But the music stopped, the dancers took their curtain,

                        The river had come to a lock – a shuffle of programmes –

                                    And we cannot continue down

                                    Stream unless we are ready

                                    To enter the lock and drop.