This poem is taken from PN Review 182, Volume 34 Number 6, July - August 2008.
Six PoemsThe Orbital Samba
The lights on the shore and the crowds as they roar and the rhythm are leading you townwards
And the drums as they beat get into your feet like the rum when the bottle tilts downwards
And it runs through the veins where it plans its campaigns like Wellesley before Salamanca.
Your arms are in bud with splayed fingers and blood; each side-kick you give is a spanker.
One hip like a rocket departs from its socket while the other revolves on its axis
And the whole body sways as the pelvis sashays and the spine absolutely relaxes.
You decide that it's pleasant to feel deliquescent and notice that people around you
With their arms in the air and with glittering hair are edging their way to surround you,
For you are the star that they sense from afar like matter obedient to gravity,
The luminous centre they all wish to enter, the focus of total depravity.
Your limbs are balletic, your skin is magnetic, your gaze is compelling as granite,
Your merest inaction's a fatal attraction, the force that sets spinning the planet.
No wonder the dance is biology's chance to shuffle its cards for the future:
Not only the samba but also the mambo, the maypole, the Minnie-the-Moocher,
...
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