The Dance

She was so sick, a pathetic dog, ugly as sin, and wild, a blond bitch,

Who seemed to be old, her fur going white, though that was probably

Part of the sickness. And she looked as if she had just given birth,

Because her dugs were swollen, but they were also disfigured,

So maybe they were full of rot and not milk, and her gait was uneven,

Her head down and swinging, causing her to list in half circles

From which she had to turn back. And it was painful to watch

Her work her way up the stone path, in and out of the black shadows

Cast by the imported cypresses. In she walked. Out she walked.

That is how things go. But that is not how this went. For when

The dog came to the circle of stone surrounding the stone pillar

The beautiful man stood on, bent over and sideways across one knee,

His huge genitals pushed forward, she stopped. And at his feet,

She struggled down to her knees, the way a newborn calf struggles

Up to his feet, her hindquarters in the air, and then she opened

Her mouth wide, and turning her head to the side, as if her ear hurt,

She began to bring something up. I thought it might be

The sickness itself, a dark swollen mass with hair on it, but it

Kept coming, the way a child comes, a raised fist, and soon a head,

Not a child’s but a man’s, lay smashed against the dirt and stones,

And the dog’s poor mouth seemed broken, and then broken

Further as a blunt shoulder shoved free, and then an arm,

The wretched body of the dog, if it could be called that, body or dog,

A shaking thing, a ghostly thing, like a trembling lilac bush,

Or a snake’s lit rattle. I do not know how to describe this. The insects

Had gone dumb. And the newborn man began to wrestle his way

Out of the creature only half his size, unless he were half a man,

But he was not, for after a time, long or short, a full man lay

On his back on the stones, and the dog lay like a castaway coat

To the side, just a shadowy rag of cloth and bone. And then

The stone man bent over, bent to see. As if he had been standing

All these years in the same difficult position, waiting for the waters

Far below to deliver this naked creature, that looked like him,

But smaller, onto these white stones, circling his high pillar,

Circled again by a wall of trimmed privet, the imported cypresses

And their shadows stretching away in four different directions,

Through the gardens of live forever, and the gardens of marigolds,

And the beds of now-dead irises, and the dark domain of the roses,

From which, one day, the gentle marble woman vanished, never