Public Republic

Simon Perchik

Photo: jenny downing

At the end each dancer darkens
bends through somewhere shallow
and fronds floating on stage: the dam
can’t hold and we are left to swim
upstream, barely enough water

to remember where –the dancers
still clear, precise, scrambled
the way a nightmare must sense
how makeshift it is, weighs
almost nothing, not sure
which sleep will be its last

–to chaos! an offering :applause
that comes all at the same time
tells a story to the dancers
who suddenly can fly no further, how

in a landlocked sky, long ago
extinct, grotesque birds
and growing monstrous –teeth! jaws
while their dreams, weaker, weaker
at last letting go and we lean

over these footsteps
who even before our eyes
are changing into a huge shadow
the way this still warm swamp
vaguely will remember the brilliance
there once was and rivers flowing past.