An atomic sprite perched on a polished monster-stallion reigns over Ringling's revolving trinity of circus attractions Something the contour of a captured crab waving its useless pearly claws From a squat body pigmy arms and bow legs with their baroque calves curve in a bi-circular attitude to a ballerina's exstacy An effigy of Christmas Eves smile-cast among chrysanthemum curls it seems a sugar angel while from a rose flecked ruff of gauze its manly legs stamp on the vast rump of the horse An iridescent speck dripped from a rainbow onto an ebony cloud Crab-Angel I christen you minnikin of masquerade sex Helen of Lilliput? Hercules in a powder puff? SONG Had you been born in regions of the Unicorn To balance on his ivory horn perhaps - - - " Per Bacco! 'Tis an idiot dwarf hooked to a wire to make him jump " Automaton bare-back rider the circus-master jerks your invisible pendulence from an over-head pulley to your illusory leaps in up-a-loft signs the horse racing the orchestra in rushing show throw his whimsy wire-hung dominator to dart through circus skies of arc-lit dust Crab-Angel like a swimming star. clutching the tail-end of the Chimera An aerial acrobat floats on the coiling lightning of the whirligig lifts to the elated symmetry of Flight - - - A startled rose whirls in the chaos of the hoofs The jeering jangling jazz crashes to silence The dwarf - subsides like an ironic sigh to the soft earth and ploughs his bow-legged way laboriously towards the exit waving a yellow farewell with his perruque |