Early Music I

"La Folia" (anon.)

The world's first Number One?
Portuguese, a shepherds' dance implying
madness or extreme joy
--it must have been a hoot to dance it,
fast and sweaty, erotic too
away from all those sheep.
When Columbus bumped into the Americas
they were dancing it at court,
laughing at the shepherds but still
loving the music and the
blind mad whirl of skirts and hearts.
But in that whirl there is a plaint
and someone, no doubt late at night,
slowed it down to make a
Sarabande of such sadness that it
stirred the souls even of those
who had lost their minds to its
lusty, throbbing rhythm only
the night before.

The faster, fleeter dance had already
passed the porous Pyrenees
into Provence and thence to Paris,
stirring French feet.
It's slower brother followed, via
slender staves on brittle paper,
into brittle minds suspicious of
newfangled things.
By Spanish conquest it invaded the Americas:
by Spanish possession it infiltrated Italy,
the Netherlands too, from whence it
seeped into England where poor people
whooped to dance to the Follies of Spain while
Armadas came and went and
Dutch fought Spanish fought English
all dancing to the same tune
and laughing as they danced.

Meanwhile, men who made their living playing
viols or theorbos or clavecins
spent their silent nights
mining the music's melancholy heart
so that even when two hundred years
of thunderous feet fell silent
the plangent chords went
echoing on.