Dancing with Europe by Alison Lock

Let’s go to the Latin Quarter,

listen to jazz, read poems, cross the border,

in resistance we’ll slip through

as they shut the door, in no order.

 

We’ll schoozy a little, talk idle,

consider the blues, the ache of folly,

the impossible adieus as we sip

from our chalice of melancholy.

 

When it’s late we’ll play music, dress up:

fedora, feather, fandango

– flicker in the streetlight,

silhouettes of defiance in a tango.

 

If the stylus should slip from the groove

we’ll click our heels, not rise

with the vinyl. We’ll abide, hip by hip,

swinging our great continental thighs.