Argentine Tango

All that wealth and beauty,

Squandered, reduced to this!

Argentina.



Have you seen the old man dancing,

The fat ugly poor man dancing,

To whom all the beautiful women

Gravitate,like moons around a planet?



In the eye’s empire

We move to the sound

of joyful disillusionment

and carnival despair.



Go, dance with beauty,

Take splendour in your arms

And dare a simple tango in the dark.

Better to be lucky than good.



In the ballroom hundreds of couples

Slowly rotate around the vast floor, two by two,

The young and the old, the plain and the beautiful,

The men proudly puffing out their chests

And holding their partners close,

The women leaning into their embrace

And tracing lemniscates with their gams

Through the syncopations

Secret Africa contrives