Chapter I: HAVE not written, reader,

That you may read. . . . They sit in rows in the bare school-room Reading. Throwing rocks at windows is better, And oh the tortoise-shell cat with the can tied on! I would rather be a can-tier Than a writer for readers.

I have written, reader, For abstruse reasons. Gold in the mine . . . Black water seeping into tunnels . . . A plank breaks, and the roof falls . . . Three men suffocated. The wife of one now works in a laundry; The wife of another has married a fat man; I forget about the third.

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 31_

THE night is growing deep with snow
O put your hand in mine,
While the mirthful secrets that we know
Bloom in the fire-shine--
Flakes falling with an undertow
Of delicate design.

Hushed are the courts where ladies went
Unquestioning to quaff
Goblets of liquid firmament--
Thank God that we can laugh!

Hushed are the plains where Asia poured
The blood of peacock kings--
But we can echo, thank the Lord,
What the China teapot sings:

Nothing bereaves
The eternal tune
Of little crisp leaves
Green in the moon.

The night is deeper still with snow . . .
O let us never stir
From the mirthful secrets that we know
Of old diameter!
Eve laughed at Adam long ago,
And Adam laughed at her.

ANNE KNISH _Opus 150_

SOUNDS, pure sounds-- Nothing-- Vibrancies of the air-- And yet--

This summer night There are crickets shrilling Beyond the deep bassoon of frogs. They cease for a moment As the rattling clangor Of the trolley Bumps by. I hear footsteps Hollow on the pavement Now deserted And blank of sound. 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 breasts 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 bloody 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 butterflies 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 cocktails 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 Hellespont,
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 passed. 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 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_