The Dance of Death / A Cruel Spring by Sarah Das Gupta

The Dance of Death

Drums beat, wildly, madly,
echoing grimly among the green hills.
In the distance forest trees
lashed by a titanic storm,
bend in obeisance to the gods
of a savage Spring.

In a circle, young girls dance,
at first their steps slow, graceful.
Bare, slender feet leave
soft, momentary footprints.
The drum beat quickens, darkens.
The dancers, captured, controlled
by the demands of the music,
quicken their footsteps
in the whirling hysteria of the violins.

One lone girl remains.
Faster, faster the music rushes
A crazy orgy, an insane tempo,
her feet no longer touch the turf.
Long, dark hair, blown and tortured
by the rising wind.
The dancer becomes a circle,
a whirling flash of colour and light.
a pattern, an emblem,
a dying sacrifice to Spring.

* Stravinski’s ballet ‘The Rite of Spring’ was first performed in Paris on 29th May, 1913 amid riots among some of the audience. It concludes with the Dance of Death.

A Cruel Spring

 

Water rushes, angrily, cruelly,

crashing jagged boulders

against the soft, green banks.

Red clay colours the waters.

Now a stream of blood

dashes onward.

 

In forest glades

beneath the tangled roots

of oak and beech,

Death Cap, Funeral Bell,

fairy toadstools

to lure the unwary.

 

The elusive shapeshifter, hare,

runs through the bramble thickets

where sharp thorns hide

under new, green livery. 

Beneath the sparkling

woodland pond

thick, black sludge

lies in ambush.

 

Sarah Das Gupta is a teacher from Cambridge, UK who enjoys writing poetry when it is getting dark and she can just see the bare branches of the trees and hear the river flowing quickly just below the window.