Monday, August 14, 2023

THE BALLET DANCERS OF UKRAINE

by Suzanne Morris




        a romantic ballet in two acts


They fled from
all over Ukraine

screaming sirens the
new dance master

from towering wings
of concert halls

to air raid shelters’
indifferent walls

emerging, resolute
En avant! 

for the performance of
their lifetimes:

operatic defense of a
a venerated Art now

threatened with extinction.

Some took their positions
à la barre in the Hague,

others journeyed farther

into the arms of
Ratmansky’s Giselle

at Washington’s Kennedy Center:

Ghostly figures from the
18th century

swathed in clouds of
transparent tulle

float in an ethereal
pas de bourrée

returning to a place that
they once knew, but

now is no more
than an apparition

like the beautiful
peasant girl

beloved of one forbidden
to woo her 

pursued by another
jealous to own her

lost in a Potemkin village

where pantomime
and pirouettes fuse

in Act One’s show-stopping
conclusion:

Giselle’s tragic death
from heartbreak.

When the curtain ascends
the maid is mourned

flowers laid at her grave,

her spirit torn between
heaven and hell’s

treacherous pas de deux

...and yet au fil du temps...

the story’s hopeful end,
Ratmansky’s wish come true

the audience releasing
a long-held breath then

rising to their feet, Bravo!m

What will become of the
soul of Ukraine

when Russia’s
dance to the death concludes

and the grinding thud of
invaders’ boots

is but a ghostly echo?

Will her steps be mired
evermore 

in a Wilis encore of
revenge?

Or, will her soul
like the peasant girl’s

leave hate in the grave,
and forgive?

Au fil du temps… 


Suzanne Morris is a novelist and a poet.  Her poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Texas Poetry Assignment, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Pine Cone Review, Emblazoned Soul Review, and other journals and anthologies.