Waltzing with Cherenkov: The Blue Palace

Such a dancer! Is there any step he doesn't know?
One step two step charleston tango waltz rhumba
hot cha cha
even--did you ever hear of-- macarena?

In another room they dance.
My wife wears a hat.
They always wear hats
scarves, wigs-- in Latinate daintiness-- prostheses
for cranial alopecia--
embarrassed as they are
about the hair.

She emerges in an aura (that only I can see) of ghostly
luminescence-- blue--ethereal,
but real, a phenomenon
named for the physicist Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov
and having to do with the curious properties of light emitted by electrons
in a fluid under the influence of radiation traveling at speeds
greater than the speed of light-- that is--
the speed of light in that substance.

I feel the heat of the rays, as a warm metallic nugget
melting inside me, she says,
doze dreaming he is with me
in a hall of mirrors and tender light. We dance
to the Old World strains of violins.

He is very gentle, she says, gentle as a dove.

...........................................................Israel Lewis

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