Dance Figure

I would pray for thunder
Clanging across a copper sky,
For the scissors of the lightning

Rending green clouds.

As a tempest in the tree-tops,
I scream into the fiery wind;
As rain, wing-footed,

I fleet over dim valleys.

I am the silver of storm,
The gold of shuddering mist-tissues
Clouded about the head of that God

Whose name is fury to the world.

Speak, joints,
Wrists, ankles, knee-sockets!
Shout -- arms, legs,
Shoulder-reaches and finger-tips!
Cry the song of an iron chariot
Rolling wheel and wheel
Along the wind tracks.

I leap in an angle of lightning.

I bend, spring, glitter,

Ripping the cloud-veils.

Who has seen the passion of my heart?

Are there eyes which can bear the sight of me

Approaching in the darkness?

The black horses snort at my coming,

The trees fling the roses of their leaves before me.
Sing --

While the leaves tear from the trees.

I leap from the heavens --
Shall you not behold me?

Daughter of thunder and the flake of it,
The deep pools wait for me.
I am the flash of a single body

Shivering to a million reflections.

As the thunder walks upon the sky
With steps of brass and ochre,

So I walk,

Upon a tower where no light is,
Slightly gauzed,

A moon whose clouds escape her.

You who desire me,
Where are you that I may reach you?
For whom am I come

If not for you?

Thunder of midnight,
Thunder of the morning,
I have made my waist supple for you.
I have taught my hands an unknown cunning.

My legs are the pillars of a flowing sky.

Dance then,

You who are curved to receive me.

Fling a new shadow from my brightness.

I am as you would have me,

The breaker of moulds and medallions,
Fashioning all things to a heaviness of thunder,
To a glory of unquenchable lightnings,

Whose image shall endure

To everlasting time.

Torch of thunder,
You burn upon the mountains,

And the lesser peaks
Fly up with flame.
Dazzling torch of aconite and silver,
Blaze -- flare --
Penetrate the chasms of the great rocks,
The clefts in the mountain sides.
O radiant valleys,
Catch fire and sing with it in your mouths!
Light is forever,
For the fire of the sky has no end.

* * *

Thunder-dancer,
I am tranquil,
Tranquil.
Slow drops drip from the trees,
Unevenly falling.
Slowly, with the slow rain-drops,
Dance,

And sleep.