Dimmed summer. The fortune-teller reads
my palm in the humid dark.
That spring I could not be whole.
Feeling atonal and unconciliatory,
I went to see The Rite of Spring.
I went to see what art in general is about
and what people are really like.
I wanted to watch the shape
of a movement,
the trajectory of a body as it makes
the shapes that it will in a limited ambit,
revolving around an implied center.
The young virgin dances herself to death
to bring forth
the flowering of spring.
Free-verse rhythms,
ritualized, vivid decisions of actions.
I went to see what people are really like
in a thousand human ways.
All these gestures from life, deformed
to suit a more open, imagined music.
She won’t make an affirmation
or a negation of my destiny,
but it’s good for business, the way she eats
through the score of a life and keeps me
hypnotized by the future destination.
I watch the fortune-teller as I watch
an absorbing movie:
I just want to know what happens.
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