The Naked Dance

Michael O’Sullivan
Perhaps Nature is itself the paradox:
All I know is that, while you danced Naked in the snow, and threw your clothes On branches aching with the touch,
I felt the tumult of an icy lust
Perfected by the very snow that fell. Nothing is usually darker than grey flesh Exposed to the incomparable snow;
Yet, when the brilliant Moon had failed And eerie light exuded from the flakes, You blended with that light,
Until a crackling sound alone identified A dance which gathers colour to itself.
You moved until the snow became a danceYour flesh the clothes it tossed idly away.
Page 80, Poetry Ireland Review Issue 26