she danced with soldiers made for war

 
take me drunk
because a man couldn’t stand it sober  –

sure, it happened this way:
a girl on a dance floor caught her earring as it fell;
she removed the other one & walked over to me
where I sat merely drowning in her beauty.
I held out my hand & she placed the dangling jewels in my palm.
when the song ended, she returned, this girl I never danced with;
she took her earrings without speaking & walked away.
and it was over.

but in a poet’s romance, the interlude becomes an esplanade
reserved for slow dancing. after she took her earrings, she sat at
my table, saying she needed to rest after being squeezed & spun
in loops most of the night. she was friendly & put her hand on my
knee: I recoiled like a Carbine from the shock of it.

when other soldiers approached to intercept her, she took my hand &
we moved to the dance floor. we swayed in a sensuous rhythm as the
sinister melodies of the Switchblade Symphony poured over us like
deflowering honey.

it was not within the realm of my violent passion to embrace her with
wicked arms, nor even to kiss her, though I would dream of it. her lips,
her eyes; her form, which must have been the clay of Galatea before
Venus made her real.

but I danced with her, I held her, & when I let her go,
I wrote poems & went to war…


(Model: Maidi, 1931)