Dancing the Rumba

The world sits on a woman’s hips.
The face, impassive, eyes staring high
Is an African mask,
As the bodies, ruled by rhythm,
Shake and rotate,
The hymn of the virgin and the whore.
The woman hardly moves her feet,
Concentrating on contortions
And shuffling within a small square;
While the man circles endlessly round her,
Showing off with cocky flair,
Sometimes charging in at her,
Without ever touching,
Only to retreat, defeated by her power,
Till eventually she feigns
Surrender to his gestures,
Catching the kerchief he tosses
To throw it coquettishly back.
The moment when navels meet;
That is the source,
The transaction of life for death,
The lethal snakebite,
A fiery fall
Into the Congo’s currents.
Never was the low so high,
Nor the high so low;
Nor truth and lie so close;
Nor the open so closed
And the closed so open;
In this consecrating desecration,
This beautiful revolt.