Dancer At The Edge Of Time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Readers often ask me why I revise poems at all, especially when they have appeared in their original form in various poetry magazines and/or anthologies. I suspect it is because I did not quite manage to say what wanted to say the first time around. Years on, from a distance, I can home in on the poem and knock it into the shape. I may or may not have intended.

Our thoughts, attitudes and emotions are a kaleidoscope of mind-games whose patterns change even while retaining the same custom made model of perception we like to call insight, first cousin to imagination.

Sometimes readers prefer the original version; sometimes, I do as well. Sometimes, too, I look back at a poem and the kaleidoscope turns of its own accord; my focus on certain patterns of perception shifts, insisting the poem shift appropriately. Any resulting revision may be slight or major, but always significant; it does not cancel out the original version of a poem if only because it is an extension of it. Critics will take issue with me, of course, but it is as it is...

The old adage is so true; actions really do speak louder than words and few louder or more effectively than the art of dance.

To what extent, I often wonder, are we our own choreographers...?

This poem is a kenning.

DANCER AT THE EDGE OF TIME

On a custom-built stage,

reaching out to the mind seeking

to reason excuses for its petty

potholes that pass for smouldering

coals of body language

(potential for pretty words)

consigning empty rhetoric

to the earth above graves that rage

at our being misunderstood

Now gentle, meek and mild,

now run wild, this dance of a lifetime

they pay a high price to see

who turn up for a private viewing

expecting to see subtler steps

for Right, Left, (what's wrong?)

be spotted learning something

of what passes for ‘live art’ driving

a hard bargain with us all

Gracefully, gesturing a plea

to be discerned if rarely acknowledged

by an inner eye usually inclined

to be lazy, but given a shake now and then,

by home truths we’d rather ignore;

Dancer takes a bow. Performance over,

task all but ended, art’s love affair

with life staking its existence (and ours)

on daunting, haunting applause

Practising slow, slow, quick, quick, slow

till dead on our feet, me and my shadow

  

Copyright R. N. Taber 2006; 2012

[Note:  an earlier version of this poem appeared in Celebrations; 15 years Of The People’s Poetry, Anchor Books (Forward Press) 2006 and subsequently in Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]