Poem: I Want to Dance

I want to dance,
I want to stomp my feet like the Irish and the Spanish do,
Romp through the streets of my hometown,
‘Til they say, like Yeats,
‘Who goes with Sean,” he must be mad, there’s no two ways about it.
There’s not.
Who knew? The Irish and the Spanish,
So I want to dance like they do.
But I can’t dance.

I’d accept this advance on pleasure:
Become a shoe for a pretty cailin, a treasure
Of the O’Banyon’s or O’Malloy’s
And Oh! Her dance would raise a flush unseemly
For such fair young cheeks, her popping knees, her leaps!
I’d blush myself before that passion, expressed without expression,
Perhaps with only chin a-tremble, arms at attention,
A rigid Celtic rod sunk deep and set a-quivering
In a tide of spastic feet
Below
The terse rhythm of heel and toe would shame my poor verse
And its drag-ass time. Of course, as a shoe,
I’d have to soak up her sweat.
But think of the angle I’d have covered,
Imagine the perspective.

There’s a painting in the Gardner Museum in Boston,
You know, the one that got ripped off some years back—
The place, not the painting—
It’s still there, too big for mere thieves to take away,
El Jaleo, by John Singer Sargent,
It greets you when you enter,
Takes up one wall, lit up with flood lights—
Now that’s big—
In black and white, and startling red,
A flamenco dancer at dusk
Before a wall propped up by seated men,
One laughing,
Musicians and muchachos in murky evening, and
Oh boy! I’m not Spanish, but wish I were when I see that painting,
Wish I were that laughing one, head thrown back delirious,
His heart, conviction, the equal of the woman’s show.
(No girl here. Full female figure. Experience.
Something lost and some things gained,
Invitation and rebuff, and the dust of dancing feet.)

Perhaps she’s lost, and he, perhaps they all,
Lost to the world, but dancing,
Caught up in the passionate embrace,
With the frankness of sinners that shocks,
That is almost like Grace,
Yes, a last Grace and a lasting one.

And who is it that is shocked?
I could become resentful
Those who play at having it both ways,
Who play, pretend passions come
Measured like prescriptions.
Medicine is bitter.
I mistrust those who won’t commit
But bleed enthusiasm like bloodless stones, and sit
Like cautious clerks
While I wave my arms and am known as a madman in my own hometown.
Who lets that young girl drown
In a sea of frantic dance,
And get away with it?
What pretense.
With a bland expression she covers
But I hope she follows her feet and not her mother.

So I am not sorry to take my due
For my wish to become her shoe.