Saturday Night

Photo by emdot.

Saturday Night

Out of the impenetrable wood
– Elizabeth Bishop

And young girls shall gather
to dance on the highway
under petals of light
that float from their shoulders
and dip into lotioned shadows.
They shall coil their salty hair
and tug at their lapsed muslins
as they fall like cushions, and spill.
Do they dance for those creatures
whose unmade selves
come unbuttoning out of the dark?
All strop and tang, they crave
whatever will settle their erupted
frames, their chemical blunders,
their overgrown sentences.
You who pass by can watch
but not enter the world of this place.
You know nothing of its way
of growing tree from shadow
so that all is fixed and root.
You who pass by, pass by. ■

© Lavinia Greenlaw.

Taken from a new collection The Casual Perfect, to be published by Faber and Faber on 1 September.