Home > Work > The Dance Most of All: Poems
1 " I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end. "
― Jack Gilbert , The Dance Most of All: Poems
2 " The water nymphs who came to Poseidonexplained how little they desired to couplewith the gods. Except to find outwhether it was different, whether there wasa fresh world, another dimension in their loins.In the old Pittsburgh, we dreamed of a city where women read Proust in the original French, and wondered whether we would cross overinto a different joy if we paid a call girla thousand dollars for a night. Or an hour. Would it be different in kind or onlytricks and apparatus? I worried that a great love might make everything else an exile. It turned out that being together at twilight in the olive groves of Umbriadid, indeed, measure everything after that. "
3 " Waking At NightThe blue river is grey at morningand evening. There is twilightat dawn and dusk. I lie in the darkwondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end. "
4 " Goodness is a triumph. And so it iswith love. Love is not the partwe are born with that flowersa little and then wanes as wegrow up. We cobble love togetherfrom this and those of our machineryuntil there is suddenly an apparition / that never existed before. "
5 " Ovid in Tears"Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.They asked him what he meant by garden.He explained about gardens. “In the cities,”he said, “there are places walled off where colorand decorum are magnified into a civilization.Like a beautiful woman,” he said. How likea woman, they asked. He remembered their wivesand said garden was just a figure of speech,then called for drinks all around. Two roundslater he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagnecouldn’t read but still made a world. About HagiaSophia and putting a round dome on a squarebase after nine hundred years of failure.The hand holding him slipped and he fell.“White stone in the white sunlight,” he saidas they picked him up. “Not the great firesbuilt on the edge of the world.” His voice grewfainter as they carried him away. “Both the melodyand the symphony. The imperfect dancingin the beautiful dance. The dance most of all. "
6 " The blue river is grey at morningand evening. There is twilightat dawn and dusk. I lie in the darkwondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end.— Jack Gilbert, “Waking at Night,” The Dance Most of All: Poems. ( Knopf; First Edition edition April 7, 2009) "