The Ring of Dancers

 

Warren Slesinger

It was a land in league with its’ own remoteness;

a land half-sea, the sea half-ledge

on a course that he had chosen when he crossed

over a thousand mapped square miles of  ocean,

water and wind that carried the clouds toward an island

so far north of the norm that it was known

by its’ coordinates instead of a name for what he wanted:

a world in the reach of his rigging.

 

Instead of spillways, a place with hills where the pines

stood still. On a porch that overlooked the harbor,

he could light his pipe, and rock as slowly as the boat

that rode below him on the ripples of its own reflection

 

He watched a wave lift and pound itself to spray.

Where in the world with its’ gulls and its’ garbage was the shore?

It was not on the horizon that dipped and drew the eye

that watched the whitecaps and the sky into a network of wrinkles

while the map was flapping in his hand and he tried to locate

this wind-spit of sand, this island in the North Atlantic

that traded with the traffic of the screeching birds.

He let go of the wheel, and sea steered him

over the lifting swell toward the clanging dome of the bell buoy

that rolled above and below him with one cold stroke

of the tide and the coastline came through the mist

crumbling from its cliffs.

 

At the landing, his sea-legs sagged,

And the wake of everywhere he had been caught up with him

In plunging undulations that washed and washed among the pilings

As if the sea could not come clean of something.

 

It was a large world in a small place.

A church spite pointed a wooden steeple at the sky above a cluster

of clapboard houses. The women knotted their kerchiefs,

the men pulled on their caps. It was bright enough to see a bead

of pinesap in a board, and the sand in the street

was as clean and coarse as salt, but he smelled the odor of fish

from the barrels of a wagon to the nets on the dock, and the flies

in the toilet where the urine spattered in the stall.

Outside, he saw a fisherman pluck his pipe

From his mouth, and spit in the wind for luck.

 

In a store, he bought a postcard and a sweater

at a bargain table from a blonde with braids

and a smile as wide as the rippling tide.

He wanted to nibble at her neck with white bites

when she explained the rate of exchange,

but he could tell that he would lose his money

because the bell on the back of the door

clattered and clanged like a piece of loose change.

 

He inquired about a sign he had seen of people

dancing in a ring, and she replied that it signified their life

together on the is island. It was the folkdance of the fishermen.

They performed it once a week to keep the tourists

from leaving. Indeed, he had seen it stamped in purple

on his passport and the price tags in the store.

It appeared on dinner plates with epigrams and the borders

of bedspreads, tablecloths and napkins. It was in the knit

of winter mittens with matching caps. The figures of the dancers

were as tightly woven as the social order.

 

Outside, he saw the sun setting in the pines, and he shivered

in his sweater that unraveled as he walked away.

On a stony outcrop where the goats grazed,

he watched a wave that summed itself up to nothing

when it crested and collapsed. Where in the world

with its knives and its nets was the haul?

 

At a tavern on a distant strand, the dark of the carpet

came to his knees. The women whispered,

the men puffed on their pipes , and watched him

while he ate the local dish, and gave a great red gasp

when he drank the wine that stripped the lining of his throat,

and heard them joke about the time of the tide

and the feeding depth of fish.

 

In the window was a world that tipped and spilled.

The moon appeared too near and bright as a bulb

lit by a chain in a room too small to hold all the people

who nudged him toward the middle of the ring

where the blonde slipped her and into his and kissed him

with her lips wet and her earrings jingling.

 

He stiffened on the ridged fiddling, and trembled on the trill

of the tinny whistle until the drumbeat struck him dumb.

He staggered, the line sagged, the moon rolled over his shoulder,

and the hands of the dancers caught him, and held him

when he came to the surface of the roundabout world.