Spectra Part 3

They die.

The crickets now are sleeping; Even the leaves Grow still.

And slowly Out of the blankness, out of the silence Emerges on soundless wings!

The long sweet-sloping Rise and fall of far viol notes,-- The mad Nirvana, The faint and spectral Dream-music Of my heart's desire.

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 29_

KNIVES for feet, and wheels for a chin, And the long smooth iron bore for a neck, And bullets for hands. . . . And the root runs in, The root of blood no stone can check, From the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the grinding crash of sin, From engines hugging in a wreck.

A thousand round-red mouths of pain Blaring black, A twisting comrade on his back In a round-red stain, Clotted stalks of red sumac, Discs of the sun on a bayonet-stack . . .

Blood, flame, a cataract Thrown upward from a desert place: Flame and blood, the one blind fact, Contained, or spouting from the face, Or coiling out of bellies, packed In a stinking spent embrace . . .

Country, a babble of black spume . . .

Faith, an eyeball in the sand . . .

Mother, a nail through a broken hand-- A kissing fume-- And out of her breast the b.l.o.o.d.y bubbling milk-red breath Of death.

ANNE KNISH _Opus 96_

YOU are the Delphic Oracle Of the Under-World.

As we sit talking, All of us together, You flash forth sudden utterance Of buried things That writhe in obscure life Within our minds' last darkness.

That which we think and say not You say and think not.

In us these thoughts Like worms stir vilely.

But from you they depart as sudden b.u.t.terflies Crimson and green against the pure sky.

Many are the revelers; Few are the thyrsus-bearers; And sole is Dionysus.

This I inscribe to you, Singer, In memory of the crags of Delphi And the Thessalian vales beyond.

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 40_

TWO c.o.c.ktails round a smile, A grapefruit after grace, Flowers in an aisle . . . Were your face.

A strap in a street-car, A sea-fan on the sand, A beer on a bar . . . Were your hand

The pillar of a porch, The tapering of an egg, The pine of a torch . . . Were your leg.--

Sun on the h.e.l.lespont, White swimmers in the bowl Of the baptismal font Are your soul.

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 pa.s.sed.

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 . . .

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 kins.h.i.+p 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_

I ONLY know that you are given me For my delight.

No other angle finishes my soul But you, you white.

I know that I am given you, Black whirl to white, To lift the seven colors up . . .

Focus of light!