Spectra Part 4

ANNE KNISH _Opus 1_

REITERATION! . . .

The seconds bob by, So many, so many, Each ugly in its own way As raw meats are all ugly.

Why do we feed on the dead?

Or would at least it were with cries and l.u.s.t Of slaying our human food Beneath a cannibal sun!

But these old corpses of alien creatures! . . .

I loathe them!

And too many heads go by the window, All alien-- Filers of saws, doubtless, Or lechers Or Sabbath-keepers.

Morality comes from G.o.d.

He was busy.

He forgot to make beauty.

Why does he not call back into their hen-house This ugly straggling flock of seconds That trail by With pin-feathers showing?

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 55_

WHY ask it of me?--the impossible!-- Shall I pick up the lightning in my hand?

Have I not given homages too well For words to understand?--

Words take you from me, bring you back again, Dance in our presence, cover your proud face With the incredible counterpane, Break our embrace . . .

No, not to you Your wish, But to some kangaroo Or cuttle-fish

Or octopus or eagle or tarantula Or elephant or dove Or some peninsula Let me speak love--

Or call some battle or some temple-bell Or many-curving pine Or some cool truth-containing well Or thin cathedral--mine!

ANNE KNISH _Opus 200_

IF I should enter to his chamber And suddenly touch him, Would he fade to a thin mist, Or glow into a fire-ball, Or burst like a punctured light-globe?

It is impossible that he would merely yawn and rub And say--"What is it?"

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 17_

MAN-THUNDER, woman-lightning, Rumble, gleam; Refusal, Scream.

Needles and pins of pain All pointed the same way; Parellel lines of pain When the lips are gray And know not what they say: Rain, Rain.

But after the whirl of fright And great shouts and flashes, The pounding clashes And deep slashes, After the scattered ashes

Of the night, Heaven's height Abashes With a gleam through unknown lashes Of delicious points of light.

ANNE KNISH _Opus 191_

THE black bark of a dog Made patterns against the night.

And little leaves flute-noted across the moon.

I seemed to feel your soft looks Steal across that quiet evening room Where once our souls spoke, long ago.

For that was of a vastness; And this night is of a vastness . . .

There was a dog-bark then-- It was the sound Of my rebellious and incredulous heart Its patterns twined about the stars And drew them down And devoured them.

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 45_

AN angel, bringing incense, prays Forever in that tree . . .

I go blind still when the locust sways Those honey-domes for me.

All the fragrances of dew, O angel, are there, The myrrhic rapture of young hair, The lips of l.u.s.t; And all the stenches of dust, Even the palm and the fingers of a hand burnt bare With a curling sweet-smelling crust, And the bitter staleness of old hair, Powder on a withering bust . . .

The moon came through the window to our bed.

And the shadows of the locust-tree On your white sweet body made of me, Of my lips, a drunken bee. . . .

O tree-like Spring, O blossoming days, I, who some day shall be dead, Shall have ever a lover to sway with me.

For when my face decays And the earth moulds in my nostrils, shall there not be The breath therein of a locust-tree, The seed, the shoot of a locust-tree, The honey-domes of a locust-tree, Till lovers go blind and sway with me?--

O tree-like Spring, O blossomy days, To sway as long as the locust sways!

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 14_

BESIDE the brink of dream I had put out my willow-roots and leaves As by a stream Too narrow for the invading greaves Of Rome in her trireme . . .

Then you came--like a scream Of beeves.

ANNE KNISH _Opus 80_

OH my little house of gla.s.s!

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_