ANNE KNISH
Opus 88
SO we came back again
After some years—
Just revisiting
The scenes of our sin.
Nothing is there but the garden;
And we had expected
That we would be there.
I heard a wind blowing
Down the sky.
It came with heavy auguries
And passed.
There was a soothsayer once in Rome
Who on a white altar
Inspected the purple entrails of victims.
EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 47
GIVER of bribes in the brightness of morning,
Cities have wavered and rocked and gone down . . .
But the lamps of the altars hang round you, adorning
The niche of your neck and the drift of your gown.
O bribe-giver, marked with purple metal—
Cut in your naked contentment there shows
On the curve of your breast one carven petal
From heaven's impenetrable rose!
You open the window to myriad windows,
The high triangular door of the world . . .
Till the walls and the roofs and the curious keystone,
The carven rose with its petals uncurled,
Are swayed in the swathe of the uppermost ether,
Where stars are the columns upholding a dome,
And the edifice rolls on a corner of ocean,
Lifts on a wave, poises on foam . . .