ANNE KNISH
Opus 80
OH my little house of glass!
How carefully
I have planted shrubbery
To plume before your transparency.
Light is too amorous of you,
Transfusing through and through
Your panes with an effulgence never new.
Sometimes
I am terribly tempted
To throw the stones myself.
EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 1
THEY enter with long trailing of shadowy cloth,
And each with one hand praying in the air,
And the softness of their garments is the grayness of a moth—
The lost and broken night-moth of despair.
And they keep a wounded distance
With following bare feet,
A distance Isadoran—
And the dark moons beat
Their drums.
More desolate than they are Isadora stands,
The blaze of the sun on her grief;
The stars of a willow are in both her hands,
And her heart is the shape of a leaf.
And they come to her for comfort
And her black-thrown hair
Is a harp of consolation
Singing anthems in the air.
With the dark she wrestles, daring alone,
Though their young arms would aid;
Her body wreathes and brightens, never thrown,
Unvanquished, unafraid . . .
Till light comes leaping
On little children's feet,
Comes leaping Isadoran—
And the white stars beat
Their drums.
ANNE KNISH
Opus 195