Eight Harvard Poets/Phonograph — Tango

PHONOGRAPH — TANGO

OLD dances are simplified of their yearning,
bleached by Time.
         Yet from one black disc
we tasted again the bite of crude Spanish passion.

… He had got into her courtyard.
She was alone that night.
Through the black night-rain, he sang to her window bars:

           Love me, love—ah,love me!
           If you will not, I can follow
           Into the highest of mountains;
           And there, in the wooden cabin,
           I will strangle you for your lover.

—That was but rustling of dripping plants in the dark.
More tightly under his cloak, he clasped his guitar.

           Love, ah-h! love me, love me!
           If you will do this, I can buy
           A fringed silk scarf of yellow,
           A high comb carved of tortoise;
           Then we will dance in the Plaza.

She was alone that night.
He had broken into her courtyard,
Above the gurgling gutters
he heard—
surely—
a door unchained?

The passage was black; but he risked it—
death in the darkness—
or her hot arms—(love—love me ah-h-h!)

"A good old tune," she murmured
—and I found we were dancing.