VAUDEVILLE

DJUNA BARNES

HER little feet half sought the dizzy ground

And half they rose like sun motes spent in space;

A whirling rhythm in a shower of lace,

Between the music's silence and its sound.

Too frail, like cylinders of golden flake,

The curls that swing about her polished skin,

More delicate than leaf-light on a lake

The dimples that made shadows in her chin.

Ornate the Autumn with the wane of her,

The flutter of her satin-sandled feet;

And more demure and more than quite discreet

The hem that dusts her ankles with its fur.

The light was pulsing with the quaint surprise

Of ribboned wings that aureoled her head

And like a butterfly burnt out and dead

The bister and the blue beneath her eyes.

At last she caught her spangled skirt and turned,

Taking the music's echo in its net;

And to our quick applause and quick regret

We watched the spot light empty, as it burned.