Exsultate Jubilate

    fire in that square floodlit by crimson

    gels left onstage a floating red silk

    scarf that snaked around the nimblest calves

    unable to outlast Mozart's legacy

    or Pater's gemlike flame abandoned dream

    erased by edicts of the blood the song

    the space with both feet off the ground

    if only for a moment elephantine

    memory as the curtain falls full weight

    the voice of Kathleen Battle amplified

    fades away five years to the day and still

    your body as it was caught between

    Isadora and the wheel and not what it has

    become a form that those who live must bear