Binyon's Dancers

 Having spent the greater part of the day in transit (returning from yet another visit to Worthing), I've missed most of Radio 3's Day of Dance. There have been guest artists, interviews, special performances, dance music galore – and a scattering of poems, one of which was this, by Laurence Binyon, of which I particularly like the closing image:

The Little Dancers

Lonely, save for a few faint stars, the sky
Dreams; and lonely, below, the little street
Into its gloom retires, secluded and shy.
Scarcely the dumb roar enters this soft retreat;
And all is dark, save where come flooding rays
From a tavern window; there, to the brisk measure
Of an organ that down in an alley merrily plays,
Two children, all alone and no one by,
Holding their tattered frocks, thro' an airy maze
Of motion lightly threaded with nimble feet
Dance sedately; face to face they gaze,
Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.

Laurence Binyon is best known for his famous poem of Remembrance, 'For the Fallen', but he also, among other good things, made a very successful translation of Dante, and wrote the eloquent introduction to The Bible Designed to Be Read as Literature.  

  When it comes to dance poems, I think this one by Richard Wilbur, inspired by a Degas painting, takes some beating: 

L'Etoile

A rushing music, seizing on her dance,
Now lifts it from her, blind into the light;
And blind the dancer, tiptoe on the boards
Reaches a moment toward her dance's flight.

Even as she aspires in loudening shine

The music pales and sweetens, sinks away;

And past her arabesque in shadow show

The fixt feet of the maitre de ballet.

So she will turn and walk through metal halls

To where some ancient woman will unmesh

Her small strict shape, and yawns will turn her face
Into a little wilderness of flesh.