Читать книгу Long after Lauds - Jeanine Hathaway - Страница 7

“–5–6–7–8, and 1–” The dancers drum onstage

from the wings where they were before the downbeat,

that pre-historic moment, bandaged and flinching,

calloused, split, grinning—the tick-swish of soles

on bare wood; their presence shifts how light leaps

off the watch of the ex-nun’s date. Such sound

bodies. Their backs, extraordinary overlaps

of muscle bound to bone. Contract/release,

land masses, ice floes break up, tectonics.

India ramming Asia there, under the scapula,

Himalayan scapula where legend says Doubting

Thomas spread the Gospel, a martyr in the shadow

of Everest or these wing-boned backs. It is

good news, the teaching: The dance does not begin

on the downbeat. You’re already dancing

on the “–5–6–7–8, and–”

you enter with history. Getting comfortable,

the ex-nun tilts her chin, lowers her shoulders

barely covered by rose silk,

once covered by a white wool scapular, that

strip of habit worn between gown and cape.

Her hands flat under it, thumbs tucked

into her belt. Her body still, if nothing more,

her presentation inspired by—what?—a long

tradition of women, given. Diamonds now

at her ears and throat, hands, ungloved yet

folded. She understands medieval Eckhart’s prayer

that God should rid him of God, as she could not at 25,

longing never to lose the idolatry, feeling it go:

the cloak; the headgear of wimple and guimpe;

veil, cape, tunic; sensible grandmother shoes.

She wonders: How could she or anyone dance and not

enter with history? How does gravity, the law of the present,

perfect the dancer? The stretch at the barre, the leap and lift

reflexive as religious exercise, condition this moment.

On pointe, we are all sore-footed pilgrims performing as

our bloody footprints dry already from dressing room to stage.