No ode is big
or fast enough to have
the very all of you inside it, so
I will have to be like you
and climb inside myself and fly
into the outline that the pattern
of my moving self has left behind
the outline of the possible you impossibly beautiful in everyone
like a little girl suddenly seeing the angles in
a light blue protractor and therefore being them
Where was I and who?
You for whom
we get dressed up
and go uptown and up
the elevator shaft as
the curtain goes up and when
you glide in on your diagnoal
we fall into the elevation of a dream
that has a hummingbird and Saint Teresa of Avila in it
and you
who hover in the air like a disembodied heart
shocked into eternity for the split second the music
turns to face you and you find your face up there
in the dark where we are and a smile on it
There is space here and air and breath, clarity
of perfect tears that beauty makes us cry so automatically
as you wrap the world around
your finger, then wrap yourself around the world
or fast enough to have
the very all of you inside it, so
I will have to be like you
and climb inside myself and fly
into the outline that the pattern
of my moving self has left behind
the outline of the possible you impossibly beautiful in everyone
like a little girl suddenly seeing the angles in
a light blue protractor and therefore being them
Where was I and who?
You for whom
we get dressed up
and go uptown and up
the elevator shaft as
the curtain goes up and when
you glide in on your diagnoal
we fall into the elevation of a dream
that has a hummingbird and Saint Teresa of Avila in it
and you
who hover in the air like a disembodied heart
shocked into eternity for the split second the music
turns to face you and you find your face up there
in the dark where we are and a smile on it
There is space here and air and breath, clarity
of perfect tears that beauty makes us cry so automatically
as you wrap the world around
your finger, then wrap yourself around the world
poem by Ron Padgett; photo by Martha Swope: Suzanne Farrell as Dulcinea and George Balanchine as Don Quixote (1965)
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