The Sacrificed Girl Ending With Lines From Rilke

after Stravinsky’s Le sacre du Printemps: Danse sacrale (l’élue)

First, they pick me out
of the ring, pull me
into the spiral. They call me

élue. I am young,
mutable, and without fear
of death.
As Russian arks and films stream,
where the grown man might have
drowned the child resists. War, then, is of the children
of the war. I am not afraid, one of them says—I
would say. A circle is painted in red

around me. I must be special, an altarpiece
of the sacrificial lamb. Angels genuflect and along the rim

of the golden chalice, I begin to dance.
All around me motes of dry hydrangeas. Processional drums enter
unsyncopated rhythms. Then, not far, the thawing
immortelles, woodpeckers, grain. I am a dancer
among many, unpent
like I once was, hurrying
back to my mother’s arms.

This you must know: No one is ready for release.
I never thought the earth would free me
from my form. Even now, the bones

begin to ache, the body
makes itself felt
as the limbs wring the dance. And, never wanting
to depart, I harness myself to the dance.
There is no other way to endure
what defeats me. Flawless spring will come
and I won’t
be there. The children of the war
say, We are not afraid. It is their propitiation.

Death must come
gradually, and feel like drinking water

from the led aqueducts in Ancient Rome.
My body will not even know, reduced
to filament: What will my soul cleave
to for relief? I see revelation
nowhere. I fasten myself to the dance.
There is no other way to endure what defeats.
Then my body, once inscrutable, breaks
open: For the first time I am alone with you—

you, my power to feel.