At the Ballet

War Memorial Opera House—
which war should we remember
in this marble building
with its endless corridors and
massive velvet curtain?
Gilt figures of mythology
circle the stage
and the chandelier broods over us all.
I picture it spiraling down,
a celestial catastrophe.

Below in the pit
the orchestra attacks
a passionate score,
an explosion of sound in
a treacherous tempo.
The curtain rises to reveal
a stately rectangle of light in
pure deep jewel tones,
vast and bewildering.

The brilliant geometry backgrounds human
bodies—superhuman—
leopards, gazelles, fast and fluid—leap
turn, spin.  Arms and wrists and fingertips
grasping.  Deep purple infuses the towering wall,
now suddenly green, the pattern shifts
again, gyrating dancers form
and reform intricate patterns, labyrinthine designs
scatter and combine, though one constant remains
one link
man and woman.

He approaches her.
In a beat she is in his arms—
a spring uncoiling.
He wraps her body around him as if to arrange an elegant shawl.
Four couples enter triumphantly, in deep purple, forest green, regal purple and emerald.
Men reach out to women and pose for a moment,  human sculptures
fixed in space for a second and then renewed.

The music is an avalanche tearing down a hill, then
before the crash
transformed as if by magic to an ambiguous cadence dissolving into
the sweet complaint of an oboe—
quietly weaving a melody while the dancers spin off into the wings.

Only a soloist remains—
a woman recounting an unfathomable story with her body
in the near silence.