SPANISH DANCER
As on all its sides a kitchen-match darts white
flickering tongues before it burst into flame:
with the audience around her, quickened, hot,
her dance began to flicker in the room.
And all at once it is completely fire.
One upward glance and she ignites her hair
and, whirling faster and faster, fans her dress
into passinate flames, till it becomes a furnace
from which, like startlled rattlesnakes, the long
naked arms uncoil, aroused and clicking.
And then: as if the fire where too tight
around her body, she takes and flings it out
haughtily, with an imperious gesture,
and watches: it lies raging on the floor,
still blazing up, and the flames refuse to die--.
Till, moving with total confidence and a sweet
exultant smile, she looks up finally
and stamps it out with powerful small feet.
Rainer Maria Rilke
---------
[This message has been edited by Noodle (edited 27 September 2000).]
As on all its sides a kitchen-match darts white
flickering tongues before it burst into flame:
with the audience around her, quickened, hot,
her dance began to flicker in the room.
And all at once it is completely fire.
One upward glance and she ignites her hair
and, whirling faster and faster, fans her dress
into passinate flames, till it becomes a furnace
from which, like startlled rattlesnakes, the long
naked arms uncoil, aroused and clicking.
And then: as if the fire where too tight
around her body, she takes and flings it out
haughtily, with an imperious gesture,
and watches: it lies raging on the floor,
still blazing up, and the flames refuse to die--.
Till, moving with total confidence and a sweet
exultant smile, she looks up finally
and stamps it out with powerful small feet.
Rainer Maria Rilke
---------
[This message has been edited by Noodle (edited 27 September 2000).]
