Pavlova’s Physics
by Jo Shapcott
Pavlova’s Physics - Jo Shapcott
I spent some time working with the choreographer, Sue McLennan, and her dancers and I began to think of the intelligence within dance, within the body. And in this poem I imagine the most famous of all dancers speaking about physics which she feels and apprehends through her body.
Pavlova’s Physics
Everything in my body
has been processed
through at least one star
(except for the hydrogen).
I want to speak to you about it;
I want you to know how much
I understand – and more and more
reveals itself in waves
I’m really a wise kid,
the kind that gets on and doesn’t
need to go to college to do it,
secretly learning to peel back
the potent leaves of mathematics
while boning up on Greek at night.
For all that, the consciousness
is an outdated barn of a thing,
a slow phenomenon compared
to the speed of the senses.
Today even I’m entranced
by the marine symmetry of my body
but, believe me, this world
is a place of bizarre consequences
where matter can appear
out of nothing and where
the light of stars is ancient
history when it gets here:
we can never understand
what we’re living through at the time.
You can show me your piece of warm
thigh the length of Florida
and I’m telling you, I’m affected
by the way you look at me but I need
more dimensions than geography allows.
I’m falling forward, tumbling
into increasing disorder; yes, disorder
is increasing in the universe
and will keep increasing until
the whole shebang becomes a place
where it is remembered
only the alert rodents swam.
from Her Book (Faber & Faber, 2006), © Jo Shapcott 2006, used by permission of the author and the publisher.