Myrna’s Dance
[Adapted from Neknus, Canto XXX]
They drink to pained excess who know
Not when their bellies will be filled again
With anything more tasteful than poor scraps
Stolen, or begged, from wealthy merchants who
Fill the markets daily with their goods.
They drink until the wine and they are drunk
And their induced elation sours
In the chilly early hours
Of another bleak and workless dawn.
Drunken Manus in his hovel,
Holding rout with prostitutes and fellow reprobates,
Roughly tells
His cousin Myrna to perform a dance
To please the liquid gathering.
She, poor orphan, needing shelter,
Does not dare refuse his rude command
As Manus takes a harp and plucks its plangent strings
Whilst Tanus, his blind brother,
Beats a battered drum.
To their crude music Myrna dances –
Lit by the flames from an open fire –
Slowly to start with,
Until the players’ fuddled minds can guide
Their wayward hands to find a rhythmic spell
In which the music louder, faster flows.
Then Myrna sways;
She stamps and spins,
She leaps and swirls; she claps
And ever faster moves.
Pacing, prancing, skipping, cavorting
Forwards, backwards, roundabout she goes
– Her ragged garments fluttering like wings –
As steps and gestures intricately link
With the madly evocative musical beat.
Now is Myrna stirred to ecstasy;
Fierce flash her eyes, wild streams her hair,
Swiftly fly her arms in lithe fluidity.
Beauty and gracefulness,
Passion and power
Pour from her dancing to captivate the crowd;
Until the music loses its consistency
And she stops – exhausted
By the effort she has made –
As hardened topers turn their minds and mouths
Back to the flagons they had meanwhile put aside.