The Dance

O that you too could have sat their in awe I see the human body thaw From bright emotion into motion When Sheila Barnett, that Nettleford so Rex Curved and looped in sweet elation Petals on wind, eyes camering context From the stage of egg to chrysallis This dance poised against memory still A bead of dew, and dancers bliss Distilled upon a frozen moment of will. O they that I could explain more than cumina Maypole memories or quadrille, the stamina In the hunger to express This nation's beauty, its struggling people content In the glowing sweat of happiness. The body's twirl of space is better argument For life than all the sophistries of Kant And the Heathen rant from Voltaire To our prayerless hoardes. And the scant Dress of form does cause a man to sit and stare.