The Night Dances
The Night Dances - meaning Summary
Parenthood Amid Awe and Loss
The speaker watches a child’s nocturnal movements and registers them as radiant, aching moments of beauty. Domestic sensory detail—breath, damp grass, lilies—mixes with cosmic imagery of comets and planets to suggest both wonder and impermanence. The poem balances warmth and loss: gestures that are vividly alive yet destined to "flake off" into forgetfulness. A maternal voice both celebrates small gifts and mourns their ephemeral, unreachable quality.
Read Complete AnalysesA smile fell in the grass. Irretrievable! And how will your night dances Lose themselves. In mathematics? Such pure leaps and spirals ---- Surely they travel The world forever, I shall not entirely Sit emptied of beauties, the gift Of your small breath, the drenched grass Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies. Their flesh bears no relation. Cold folds of ego, the calla, And the tiger, embellishing itself ---- Spots, and a spread of hot petals. The comets Have such a space to cross, Such coldness, forgetfulness. So your gestures flake off ---- Warm and human, then their pink light Bleeding and peeling Through the black amnesias of heaven. Why am I given These lamps, these planets Falling like blessings, like flakes Six sided, white On my eyes, my lips, my hair Touching and melting. Nowhere.
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