It seems unfair to ask everyone to fumble in the dark. So here is the final couplet and if it disqualifies me at the end-staion so be it. I'll just write another poem.
But one remains to bend the will.
Danse macabre will move us still.
From the context preceding these lines, the reader will realize (I hope) that the aha! is that an aforementioned dance continues albeit not as motion but as stillness. The couplet itself isn't spectacular but in the light of what precedes it, I think it is rather neat (well, it is my own child so I would think that wouldn't I) UNLESS the majority of readers stumbles at the crucial point, the finish line which is also the punch line.
You see by now that I'm hoping for a clear signal for " ma caaab" in this English text. I myself, ignorant and mostly self-taught and totally in awe of native and sundry fluent speakers, pronounce it with a (probably affected) slight R at the end, like "sacre" in Sacré-Cœur.
When I double-checked the pronouncing dictionaries, asking "how do you pronounce danse macabre?" I found no entry for the entire term, only for "macabre" and for that a range of pronunciations was given in the various pronouncing aids/dictionaries.
Thanks Ann (again), Duncan, Michael, John, Bill (again) for casting your votes.
Thanks all, for engaging in this thorny problem. I fully enjoyed the anecdotes and comments.
|