#525 Après le bal

In more modern times it would
be My Fair Lady. “I could have
danced all night, & still come back
for more.” Or maybe not. Naked
on a bed, asleep. Not so much a
bed but a plinth. & she obviously 
worn out, comfort not a consider-
ation. & the curtain that partitions 
now from before drawn back to 
reveal a destruction that has not
necessarily paused, houses on their 
sides, the floor of the room, the out-
side, those hills beyond, all cracked
beyond repair, bilboquets run amok, 
fallen into the grass or still flying 
around. But this is back then, back 
when the phonograph was barely 
invented, & she no untouched Aphro-
dite but fully formed, fully conscious — 
though unconscious — of her surrounds. 
No seashore, no halfshell, no cherubs, 
just somewhere offstage a disenchanted
Pygmalion translating some sheet 
music to an upright piano & singing 
to himself the before of it. “Down fell 
the glass dear, broken, that's all,
just as my heart was after the ball.”