In 1913, Stravinsky made music
out of a toothache.
Nijinksky turned it into dance
that shocked the Paris monde.
The dance unleashed a riot.
The subject and the substance
of the piece seemed so outrageous
at the time, the music strident,
the dance grotesque, mechanical.
How ill-mannered
to remind this cultivated audience
their ancestors too
once prayed to savage gods
of tree or sky
engaged in human sacrifice
hunted the hoofed beast,
eating the raw and bloody
heart hot from its chest.
And on the battlefields
of World War I, the rites
would soon resume.
Our ancestors are us
or, more correctly,
we are them.
To be immediately embraced
new art must shield us
from this truth
and history distract us
from the past.
Evocation of the Ancestors by Robbi Nester | Lemon Poetry Reed Diffuser Set
$15.00Price
