Notes for the Rose and the Nightingale dance scene from "Turquoise Moon"

the voices begins
then the crescendo
and her, standing for one moment
clinging to the fence
and then she launches herself
into the air
she dances
like something with wings
like nothing can stop her
but the death of love
or despair;

and the prison guards
on the walkways above
stop to watch:
they can't breathe
her motion thieves
the very oxygen
from their lungs
and at the end,
when the nightingale dies,
they cry.

then slowly the women scatter,
quietly, each to their own affair
and she lies there

a tremulous heap of imagined feathers 

and the woman Jan-Jan 

prods at her supine body
with a hard and dusty toe:

"you lied to me
Alberta-almost-white
you lied to me.
i didnt laugh,
i cried."


MC