Quatorze Juillet

                   "tween what we see, what be, is blinds.
                Them blinds' on fire."
                                                              -Berryman


I'm late. The dancing's already begun.
All I can see, in candlelight, are squares
of marble floor, and costumes moving past
bright ornaments, reflecting pairs consumed
in light like music, music more than light
in particles or waves, and she is there

another dancer, undecideable:
whether these patterns are chaotic signs
of something I'd forgotten, or if these
preliminary revelries are more,
I can't remember. When I knew this place
my certainty was clear. Now I'm behind

a curtain much like black rose lace, and see
its decoration as a woven fence
of polarized refraction. Waves of light
reflecting from those candles through her hands
remind me I've misread both dance and time,
and must retrace her patterns in my mind.