SMALL FAMILY of SALTIMBANQUES by Lucy Dougan

The small family of saltimbanques
occupies one corner of the dance hall every Saturday.
The oldest girl moves with the same self-sufficiency
that all her family possesses. She walks an edge
of holding something back and then giving it fully.
The younger ones sit in a circle with their mother.
Her body made each one no more or less beautiful than the next,
as if she had chided patiently before their births:
now do not outshine the one before you.
It could be a family credo, this democracy of looks.
In their little circle they eat and play, practicing a patience
that certain beggars own. Nothing is too showy, everything eked out.
Their mother watches them with a poised neutrality.
She is with them the same way her oldest child dances.
At any moment she is tuned to another order, to almost
imperceptible openings. The colour of skin
beneath her eyes, a feather-blue in forest light.


LUCY says, 'This poem came from all the times that I've sat in and watched at my daughter's dance and acrobatic classes. On one occasion a friend said to me that you can tell a lot about a child from the way she/he dances. This statement came to rest in my mind with the image of a family that also attended these classes and the atmosphere that they created around themselves in one corner of the room. Of course, it's an imagining, a waking dream, of this family and it unites them loosely with Picasso's images of performers.

I love the unselfconscious intimacy that young dancers and acrobats have with each other. As they wait in line they lean on each other and do one another's hair. To me, there's something very honest and beautiful about the body learning these skills. When I watch my daughter execute a cartwheel I feel a pride in her strength and grace - the speed and sense of rhythm required and the risks are all compelling. I've come to think of poems that come as gifts (as this one did) as something like the feeling of a thumping good cartwheel.

Sideways to this poem sits an essay by John Berger simply called "Degas". Here's my favourite part of it:

"Do we not all dream of being known, known by our backs, legs, buttocks, shoulders, elbows, hair? Not psychologically recognised, not socially acclaimed, not praised, just nakedly known. Known as a child is by its mother." '



"Small Family of Saltimbanques" was first published in The Best Australian Poems 2004 (Black Inc., ed Les Murray) and then in Lucy's book White Clay. (Giramando Press, 2008)