Willie Lin

MARTHA GRAHAM: LETTER TO THE WORLD


I would believe only in a god who could dance.
—Friedrich Nietzsche

Be was your first command.
Angular fantasies

slowly erect themselves
by bloodmeal, by hobbled light:

tulip arms and anthill heads,
unrest burning into their soft soles.

In this, there is a holiness
inexplicable. Their lit forms

switchback along hidden axes,
white as late summer fog—

and whirl white cataracts,
artlessly spilling themselves. Strange

you call it seizure, or blessing
—does it feel like illness?

Fever-worked and god-sent.
Force that drives blood into heart.

Their selfsameness makes the heart
slow, a doom-eager audience:

multitudinous voices, so many figures
in contrapposto, limbs and joints

spoking from their bodies as if—
as if there were no other way to be.

Willie Lin is currently a student at the University of Virginia.