Joseph Cornell, Homage to the Romantic Ballet

She got out of her carriage into bitter wind 
and stripped to her petticoat as commanded. 
Then danced beneath a crowd of stars
on a panther's pelt that the 
highwayman had laid down.
 
When she finally got to the safety 
of her host’s estate, to brandy by the fire 
and then to the plush, engulfing mattress,
the highway man was standing by a cave.
The whole darkened valley lay at his feet.
He stood above her like that forever.
 
Some dawns, riding through
a mountain pass, snowy light bounds 
razor blue as a killer's eyes.  
In the crowded callés of Venice
she never again found the sort of mercy 
the highwayman gave her that night.
 
            Candles - beeswax - bright.
            Ice over diamonds in a jewel box
            backed by indigo velvet
            to set off stellar ricochets.
 
After she quit the ballet, every night,  
Marie Taglioni had a servant light candles
and then place ice in her jewel box.
Abstracted, she would stare until
her breath rose as it had the night 
that the highwayman spared her and 
her dancing poured up to the stars.

	Jackson Pollock’s abstract paintings
						
must have gotten a God-like sense 
dribbling, flicking, spurting 
emissions of color 
through galaxies of motion
in an echo of that 
primary epic explosion.
 
When he painted, Pollock 
stretched or flexed his limbs
 - keening, rapacious - arteries 
throbbed and jumped in his neck.
He worked in that rapturous frenzy 
creatures reach in chase as claws 
close in on the hind of their prey; 
desire forced to the edge of capacity:
Pollock, brush dripping, limbs churning -
his dervish dance swells up from canvas.