Searching For It

Searching For It In A Guadalajara Dance Hall

You go in from the cobbled back street.

Into an empty, concrete one-room building

where prim youngish women sit in a line

of straight chairs. The women are wearing

tea dresses thrown away by rich Texan

women two generations ago. The men are

peasants, awkward in a line of chairs opposite.

Nothing is sexual. There are proprieties.

No rubbing against anyone. No touching

at all. When the music starts, the men

go stiffly over to the women. It isn't

clear whether they say anything. The dance is

a slow, solemn fox trot. When it stops,

they stand still while the men

find a coin. The women stow it and all

of them go back to the chairs to wait for

the music and another partner. This is

not for love. The men can get love

for two coins at a shack in the next field.

They know about that. And that they will

never be married, because it is impossible

to own even a little land. They are

groping for something else, but don't know what.

 

-Jack Gilbert

 

Jack Gilbert was an American poet. He was born in 1925 in Pittsburgh, and died in 2012 in Berkeley, California. He lived in various places in between, but a good deal of it in Europe. He wasn't especially prolific, publishing a half-dozen books over his long life. This is from The Dance Most of All, his last book, which came out in 2010. He was featured on the blog once before.