Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
To roam the whole world in dreams,
never sure whose sentiment controls
great leaps about space or the sounds
of a plucked guitar. The market square
is busy with skirts and bloomers, shaking
for diversion amidst so many boxes
of fresh fruit: piqué, piqué, clickety-click
coaxing out a good old-fashioned cliché.
Close-range camerawork frames Kitri
peeling oranges on high; she gives every-
thing the crowd demands at short notice—
spectacle, romance, subterfuge, weird
ronds de jambe cutting through the fray
like citrus in a hot room lit with candles.
The whole town leans into sacrifice.
Out of focus, nyet!—Rudi kicks the plastic.
(A real fist to the nose means ‘you are
fired’). Those bodies, sprawled and itching
in tulle, can’t escape the master, full up
on cheese before bedtime. We enter
another delusion, see windmills revolve
on a spray-painted horse, on flaccid mimes
of devotion. You’re going through agony…
but good lighting blooms a blister to a rose.
* Rudolph Nureyev’s full-length ballet Don Quixote was filmed over four weeks in 1972, in an airport hangar in Essendon (a suburb of Melbourne, Australia), and released to great acclaim as a ‘ballet film’ in 1973. Directed by Nureyev and Robert Helpmann, the ballet starred Nureyev as Basilio, Lucette Aldous as Kitri, Robert Helpmann as the Don, and artists of The Australian Ballet. Nureyev (known as ‘Rudi’) was a perfectionist and an uncompromising choreographer, prone to outbursts.