The Pause of Time

A Century in the Pause of Time

I want to be early this time to the milonga.
Seems that I fight time in this world.
Silent time is my enemy, a struggle not to be late.
But when music-time starts, the clock stops for me.
And in the Pause of Time, a new dimension enters.

Only a few strangers are here tonight.
I order some Merlot, and listen.
Raul Berón cries out his heartbreak,
"What does it matter to you that I cry?"
Yet, la musica Caló plays to these words
Strums a different song to my heart:
A song of joy and unbounded love forever,
The music creates a portal, the mind opening
To the Pause of Time, an unpredictable clock,
Sometimes going forward, sometimes back,
A timeless paradox and hint of an eternal dance.

She, the One-Always-Early, enters and stares, surprised.
Pretending to be a timid stranger, as if staged.
She coyly looks away, knowing that my eyes
Follow along the back of her neck and shoulders.
She glances back, covering her face in part with a fan.
I play along, trying not to show my adoration.
I play the man who does not care, aloof.
Then she submits, in perfect cabeceo timing.
Her eyes say, “I have loved you for ten thousand years.”
My eyes, my nod tell her, “But we only have Now.”



Cortina.

Again, she looks away, as if to tease me more.
I wait in this Pause of Time . . .
Nearly a century passes, but I stay true to her.
We are the Only Ones, frozen in this anomaly of time.
Others are only ghostly distractions,
Phantoms of a parallel mortal universe.

Center stage, the tanda starts.
Canaro's baton is our leader in dance:
Milonga de Buenos Aires, his intention.
We follow, with a rubato dance of eyes--
Drawing closer, stage left, stage right,
We enter the empty dance floor in this Pause of Time,
A milonga in slow motion for us, where slow is fast,
And fast is slow, where time reverses and transports us
To our first milonga to Canaro’s insistent lead.
Our lightning footwork is a mere mirage
To those who would watch.  A century passes.

We are slow and our embrace
Brings even the stars' light to stop, watch, stare.
We say nothing, but our touch has transformed
My Now and her Ten Thousand years.
Our disparate sense of time melts together,
The amalgamation of our now-and-forever.
Time becomes only a feeling between two united hearts,
The tango embrace – in the Pause of Time,
That ticks away only in the Now-and-Forever.

Photo credit:
Christel Richard of "She Looks Away"
Renate Schuster of "Tango Feet"