Lines for a Young Wanderer in Mexico

This lonely following in the old town

When dark hides the aged blood drawn up

From the Latin bricks your young feet form on

In the light rain, after many dead men

And women, after small, peasant-shrouded

Children, who burn in the big, Mexican

Suns, and cry with you in these late night times

(But laugh when you do not): this wandering,

I say, is a dancing. Young man you come

Before these live and dead, and dance. Light clothed

And lithe, intent, you dance before them all,

Still, without any songs. The supple chang-

ings of your limbs pass, movement to movement,

With every grace of youth and of distance

From the ancient dead in the audience

Of wanderers. You hold the agony

Both of young and old in the cloak of your

Lean body, which quickens to a spider

Wheeling, fragile, and which quickens to a

Star. I desire to shout my words of praise,

To shout arrogantly over the heads

Of the multitude: See, see his dancing!

It is not the dancing of the harlot,

For it goes up from the midst of us all,

Sudden, and male, and sweet, until we fall

With it into this rain-wet, brick real street.

--After James Joyce