Ars Poetica

If there is only enough time in the final

minutes of the twentieth century for one last dance I would like to be dancing it slowly with you,

say, in the ballroom of a seaside hotel. My palm would press into the small of your back as the past hundred years collapsed into a pile of mirrors or buttons or frivolous shoes,

just as the floor of the nineteenth century gave way and disappeared in a red cloud of brick dust. There will be no time to order another drink or worry about what was never said,

not with the orchestra sliding into the sea and all our attention devoted to humming whatever it was they were playing.