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.