Niall OConnor: Dance

Dance is Life he told me,

forked rivulets springing,

from august temples.

Springs of eternal youth,

still willing his efforts forward.

They had danced from Budapest in '56

out of necessity, — the Csàrdàs* their only passport,

and each evening, with a new cry for freedom,

they performed, after the dancing bears

and the Gypsy fiddler.

From Vienna to Paris,

Rome to Amsterdam, a dancing troupe,

that carried their country in carpet bags,

and hidden in the tips and heels,

of their shared heartbeat.

Dance is Life he told me

in a low ceilinged, basement restaurant,

that had not seen a summer,

or winter, for at least four hundred years,

and his woman stroked the back of his cupped,

resting hand, that still reminded her

of the arched back, and its challenge.

She hides modestly now, behind the vase of plastic flowers,

soothing the friss of his heart, in affirmation

of a time when he released, and caught her again,

at will, — forever in his orbit,

tripping over heartbeats with each approach.

Niall OConnor