The Second Waltz

An ode to the delightfully haunting 'The Second Waltz' of Dmitri Shostakovich. Please listen while reading.

The evening is sweet.

Meadow of shadow and subdued hues are gentle kisses, the bracken brushing against skin as the feathers of a hen. Bracing breeze coaxes shivers from branch, waterfront, and beast alike. It is an air that awakes and puts to slumber, that numbs and invigorates, a caress and a cuff. Underfoot, the earth is invitingly soft and firm, the littered barbs and debris of nature a reassuring texture, a simple test that divides the domesticated from the wild.

His being thrums. Unbidden, unfettered, unruly; a force seethes from within. A birdsong, a lover's serenade, a rapturous rally; it has seized the bars of its cage, his skeleton and bones, and rattles them with feverish frenzy as he traverses the woodland. Its call would raise the flute to the piper’s lips, the bow of the fiddler to its tightropes, the voice from the chest of a nightingale.

A strange place he enters, his body a-tremble. A ring in the woods, a circlet of stage, carpeted with undergrowth, with tapestries of moss and banners of lichen. Like the valley in a bowl, the centre draws him in.

His eyes lift, marvelling. How he longs to express it all:

The rippling waters that catch and toss the moonlight, soothing to the eye in all their restlessness.

The swaying of the trees, their aged trunks ever resolved against the mischievous winds, yet, their young offshoots susceptible to be teased about.

The swells and dales of the land, housing what crawls and what scampers, unbeknownst to foreigners and strangers, their secrets much and many.

Nature was born to live and to dance, in all manner and form it comes in.

With the world in the vials of his gaze, he steadies his knees and readies his wrists, with poise and purpose; he breathes it all in

To this eve of wild song, he now belongs.

 

Uncanny is the light of the moon tonight.

Something in its demeanour sings saccharine, its smile twisting the slightest too far. Under its reign, the world seems to blur before his eyes. Greyed and faded are the forestry, their shadows swaying and stretching, as if bursting to roam free. Gentle is the feather-down of bracken, long fingers trailing upon him, and soft is the soil below, often lulling his mind to complacency until bramble and gravel curse against his flesh. There is a chill that is all-encompassing; it grasps at his clothes, seeps into his lungs, pierces through his mind.

There is a disturbance deep inside of him. He does not know from whence it has come; and he is seized under the stare of this prowling beast. It is drawing nearer and daring him onward, a low rumble that pervades his body in waves. There is a sound that is not quite one; the ocean caught in a seashell, the hollow echoes within sprawling caves, a memory of a song he has not heard. Its melody and motifs pulse with some unnamable force, stirring him to an unmoored sense of helpless awe.

A circular clearing yawns before him. Anticipation racks him as he steps haltingly in, as if it were an arena. There are swathes of what grows in the damp and the dark, of lichen and moss and mushrooms. An audience of various fungi await him, bordering the ring of woodland; tall heads of inkcaps and gaping maws of scarlet elf cups, with raised horns of plenty and studs of crowned earthstars. He tiptoes to the centre, held in captive revulsion at the plants of the dead, aching to be far out of their reach and sight.

He lifts his gaze, seeking escape. But again he is arrested, every blink a struggling swallow of the horizon-feast that befalls him.

Waters cast warbling rays of that ghostly moon-shine upon him, a flitting procession of phantoms.

Trees bear the rods of conductors, and to count their thousands of arms it is unfeasible and futile both.

Titters and wrawls of critter and varmint reverberate from the depths of the forest, rising in eerie, incomprehensible chanting.

The wind and the waves and the willows, they churn and writhe and seethe. As much as he is watching, he is being watched; there is a bewitching, a siren call, a primal resonance, and it shudders the very earth.

A cistern celestial is pouring, spewing, cascading upon him, an amphora earthly. How frail, how meagre he is, how he cannot hope to contain nor withstand; it is thriving, thundering, threatening to overflow. Strings of fate pluck up his limbs, and he sways under her constraints; the ceaseless tremors that had accompanied him all this ill-boding night are stilled, by a will not his own

He is not here to perform a dance.

The dance is here to perform him.

Author's Note

Again, I recommend to read while listening to 'The Second Waltz'. The idea was to write a scene with the same events in two different tones, and it's been a happy coincidence that this has resulted in 'two waltzes'.

I am looking to experiment, practice, and improve my writing. Feedback is much appreciated. Thank you for reading!