Tango

Thrilling is the night
Sitting on a chair
Beyond a broken cafe
A squeeze-box expands
Enrobing Kings and Queens
Music reigns
Here, in the Latin quarter.

Imagination stirs
Tender curiosity
Glances fix
Her ruby lips
Too careless much
To speak their name
Varnishing the night
She lets the cobbles talk
The cobbles and the violin.

Hope inflates
Enwrapping arms
A bubble beneath the moon
We float as one
Between its tangled beams.

The hairs on her cheek rise
I feel her sigh
She gives herself to me
It is all that she has.

Hearts move, earth rolls
Cobbles kissing shoes
Fantastic sharps and flats
Pierce the ruby night.

Till music slows
Like heartbreak
And trembling violin
Weeps, then fades, as love
And bubbles burst
Beneath the moon
Forgotten coordinates
Scattered everywhere
Lost, on the tangled streets
In the stone heart
Of the Latin quarter.

She flickers now
In the distance
Red, like a candle flame
Then moves and in an instant
Extinguishes forever
The tango night
A tango dream
And all my tango fame.