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 . . .
We stand on the rose, we are images golden,
We move interchanging, attaining one crest:
One chin and one mouth and one nose and one forehead,
One mouth and one chin and one neck and one breast . . .
I pull you apart from me, struggle to bind you,
I free you, I rend you in seven great rays . . .
And we cling to them all . . . but we lose them, and slowly—
We slip with the rainbow down the blue bays.
ANNE KNISH
Opus 122
UPSTAIRS there lies a sodden thing
Sleeping.
Soon it will come down
And drink coffee.
I shall have to smile at it across the table.
How can I?
For I know that at this moment
It sleeps without a sign of life; it is as good as dead.
I will not consort with reformed corpses,
I the life-lover, I the abundant.
I have known living only;
I will not acknowledge kinship with death.
White graves or black, linen or porphyry,
Are all one to me.
And yet, on the Lybian plains
Where dust is blown,
A king once
Built of baked clay and bulls of bronze
A tomb that makes me waver.
EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 46