EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 7
BEYOND her lips in the dark are a man's feet
Composed and dead . . .
In the light between her lips is a moving tongue-rip sweet,
Red.
Her arms are his white robes,
They cover a king,
His ornaments her crescent lobes
And two moons on a string.
Sheba, Sheba, Proserpina, Salome,
See, I am come!—king, god, saint!—
With the stone of a volcano O show that you know me,
Pound till the true blood pricks through the paint!
Twitch of the dead man's feet if he remembers
A bunch of grapes and a ripped-open gown.—
And the live man's eyes are night after embers,
Two black spots on a white-faced down . . .
And in the dawn, lava . . . rolling down . . .
Down-rolling lava on an up-pointing town.
ANNE KNISH
Opus 67
I WOULD not in the early morning
Start my mind on its inevitable journey
Toward the East.
There are white domes somewhere
Under that blue enameled sky, white domes, white domes;
Therefore even the cream
Is safest yellow.
Cream is better than lemon
In tea at breakfast
I think of tigers as eating lemons.
Thank God this tea comes from the green grocer,
Not from Ceylon.