An American widow dances, her hand upon
her partner's shoulder, fitting herself into him, finding a nook
between his arm and side, and her head is leaned upon his shoulder.
She follows his every step; when he reverses there is never a hitch or
jolt; they are always going to the same rhythm. How delicious are
these moments of sex and rhythm, and how intense if the woman should
take a little handkerchief edged with black and thrust it into her
dancer's cuff with some little murmur implying that she wishes him to
keep it. To whomsoever these things happen life becomes a song. A
little event of this kind lifts one out of the humdrum of material
existence. I suppose the cause of our extraordinary happiness is that
one is again, as it were, marching in step; one has dropped into the
Great Procession and is actively doing the great Work. There is no
denying it, that in these moments of sex one does feel more conscious
than at any other time of rhythm, and, after all, rhythm is joy. It is
rhythm that makes music, that makes poetry, that makes pictures; what
we are all after is rhythm, and the whole of the young man's life is
going to a tune as he walks home, to the same tune as the stars are
going over his head. All things are singing together.
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