Howard Moss
THE RESEARCH OF DANCERS
The dancer's leg stops in mid-air.
The library researcher looking up
Something or other in the catalogue
Decides to take a five-minute breather.
He walks out past a famous painting .
Meanwhile, elsewhere, things are getting done :
The snow is kept from falling through nets
At an Aero-Biotic Arctic Station,
A fish is taught breathing at Yale . . .
Can countries be scrapped in favor ofpeople?
How sure are the dance floors under the dancers
When it's heavy going in an arabesque?
How grimy are the nails of the librarian
Always a hairsbreadth away from genius?
You'd think they'd come clean, turn white from awe.
Are thoroughbred horses being born somewhere
Too fabulous to needarticulation?
The dancer's foot has been suspended too long;
He longs for a resolution-an ending.
And the librarian's data must be done by dusk–
He, too, has a serious place to go home to .
For the dead, taps andrevetlle are one.
As the dancer places a tentative foot
On the floor of the stage, it rises to meet it,
The inanimate everywhere shudders awake,
The library stacks have just been struck
With their first good idea for a book in years;
Outside, the straw is dreaming of bricks,
As
if
it, too, had been activated
By beautiful , personal, spontaneous forms .
