Dancer in the Night

Posted on June 24, 2005 by Jenna

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There is a dancer in the night, a great tall dancer in the fog and when his feet come down on the earth they are like the feet of elephants, they are like the fall of hammers, they are like the blows rained down by the forging god upon unfinished Earth;

And when there is a person in that path, a small and fragile and tiny thing, who shouts, “Why?”

“Why do you do this thing, dancer?”

“Have a care, lest you should step on me!”

The dancer leans low and he replies,

“It is not that you are small, though you are small. It is not that I am great, though I am great. It is that you do not understand, my little person, how great and terrible and important it is,

“this dance.”

And then his breath is like the breaking of the seals,

And like the opening of gates,

And for a long mad moment the person sees it there, the vast immensity of purpose,

the certainty and the necessity

and how all that person’s life may have led to this:

that that person, and no other;
that that foot and no other;
Should come together in the dance.

There is no lack of love in that. There is no coldness. There is simply the way things must be: the dancer must dance, and the humans are so small.

And that is all.

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the dancer