Le Sacre du printemps

after Pina Bausch

At this time of night, the theater is empty:
draped in its velvet robes, echoing with ghosts

and applause. I’ve been tossing and turning
all night, as headlights flash across the ceiling.

Inside the ornate opera house, it felt close to midnight—
bottomless, like tonight—though it was the middle

of the day when I arrived and the usher
escorted me to my seat. An ocean of dirt

covered the stage. The dancers performed
underneath and on top of Stravinsky’s score.

With their bodies, they made another music:
full of lunges, panting, slaps, stomps,

and whatever sounds the body makes
when it yields to unyielding earth.

Men and women threw themselves on the floor
and into each other: smearing their skins

with dirt, violence, and sweat.
I am restless. Tonight, I remember

I vowed to feel as alive as the woman
who, in a rite of spring, must dance herself

to death. Hair frazzled, clothes soiled, the fated
woman fell to the earth then sprang back up,

slashing the air and contracting her body as if
she’d been punched repeatedly. She fell

and danced, danced and fell, until she collapsed
for the last time. —The stage went black.

How quickly I walked into the bright day,
leaving her there, behind me. On nights

like this one, when I’m crazed by wakefulness,
and darkness sacrifices itself, anxious limb

by anxious limb, into the day’s endless mouth,
I steal the red dress from the dead woman’s body

and dance wildly, with such abandon,
the room turns stained, swirling, terrible, pink.