Breaking the Silence

Beautiful people are dancing tonight in

Addis Ababa.  I am happy for them and wish

them good dancing.  There are beautiful

people all over the world in every country, dancing.  I am happy for this.  I have always

in my life hoped for dancing all around the world.  I am here in the real world and

people are dancing.  There is dancing tonight

in Khartoum Pretoria Moscow Washington. 

In Ottawa tonight we can watch beautiful careful dancing.

 

         at this point I too begin dancing

 

Music breaks the silence of this room and

we hear the sound all over the world.

I am dancing here in this room.  Here in 

this room I weave and stretch in the broken 

silence and I dance all around the world.

This global dance is fine, a fine thing.

Beautiful people are dancing together in all

parts of the world and it brings to mind 

those first nervous dances so long ago

watching in awe the brash and beautiful

dancing on the gym floor heedless of us

lesser folk holding up the walls in the dark.

 

           here my own dance begins to change

 

And I begin to understand other ways of

breaking silence.  I have called silence

forgetting.  My own dance changes from year

to year and now I name my own dance remembering.  Some time back I nearly had it perfect, my remembering dance, but I forgot a few moves.  I was not alone in this.  Some of the

great old moves were forgotten.  Do you

remember Bingo dance?  One by one the

whole quaking horny junior high school

would be up in the light, dancing.  Thinking of

beautiful people dancing tonight in Addis

Ababa and elsewhere I remember the Bingo

dance and I feel like yelling Bingo all around

the world.

 

         here my own dance is like dreaming

 

We would hear Bingo and soon there wouldn't

be enough beautiful dancers to go around and

the beautiful people dancing tonight would

have to seek out the slightly less beautiful and

the democratic geometry of the junior high

school would add up 2 4 8 16 32 and soon the

beautiful people would be looking everywhere

for new dance partners.  The beautiful people

dancing tonight in Addis Ababa would perhaps

find themselves south of town in the camps

and all over the world we would hear, 'you're 

not well enough to dance, maybe I can help.'

 

        I have awakened now from the trance

        of my dancing and listen to the

        silence of my room.