Pre-Vernal
Nursing sorrow of Pangean origin,
Rowena, uncommon, guileless, with some dread emerges into the world.
Etiolated, faded,
she discerns -with sinking heart and searing loss- that matters are unchanged:
venality, vulgarity, grim acquiescence, callowness prevail.
She feels... contrition, remorse;
yet, commendably, finds an unextinguished light, some undimmed wonderment.
Vernal
By this enspirited (though knowing well that disappointment follows) Rowena attends to her pliés by the kitchen table, relevés by the radiator, then, later, sequences before the studio mirror.
Such an unfolding: sureness, refinement, discipline, graceful line.
She has rarefied sensibility,
(a stern inner voice decrees that pure gifts be harnessed to some humdrum project or other)
But... it would be infinitely sad should grace become lumpen, mere activity triumph.
Estival
Then, energy surges, floods:
Rowena gushes into the world, resplendent, captivating, full of promise, confident, impishly disdainful, she jumps and turns and becomes... undivided;
there’s transformation to a state of play, from where creation and invention erupt.
Caught up in a comet’s tail, disordered by vapours, propelled by wild electrics, there is joyousness, continuity, unconcern; merciful, loosening, unconcern.
Her movements, free-to-a-giddyness, embrace possibility.
Serotinal
After the excitement, volatile buoyancy, comes the decline. She is spent.
Rowena steadies herself, wondering, as always, quite what possessed her.
She sits beside the pond in the courtyard;
the once-tall gentians, blue, white, lay bedraggled, buffeted by squall.
For a while, there’s graciousness, a sensible creature, urbanely reflective;
Within and Without are reconciled,
perhaps things can be made tolerable.
Autumnal
Disentangling from reverie, from allure and blandishment of certainty,
she returns to habitual disquiet:
-in some dreams -a print of Santi’s Terpsichore in trembling hand- she wanders a cheerless succession of hallways and landings, never attaining a room, never able to hang the picture.
-in others, enervated, wan, she gazes, bemused, from the periphery of things;
but, easily bruised, joining in would be... e x c r u c i a t i n g.
Perhaps, for dancing on a Sunday, she will be turned to stone; this could be acceptable..
Hibernal
Rowena, forlorn, feels only sleep is left...
having engaged as much as she is able, there’s now the need to withdraw;
it has been enough.
She desires to become
deaf before babble,
blind before ugliness,
distanced from clumsiness,
pure, before complications;
unwilling toward any inchoation, with its fresh demands.
Peter Jennings
East Sussex
April 2021
The Music Video of this work is at:
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