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 lust;
     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 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

HER soul was freckled
Like the bald head
Of a jaundiced Jewish banker.
Her fair and featurous face
Writhed like
An albino boa-constrictor.
She thought she resembled the Mona Lisa.
This demonstrates the futility of thinking.

EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 6

IF I were only dafter
     I might be making hymns
To the liquor of your laughter
     And the lacquer of your limbs.

But you turn across the table
     A telescope of eyes.
And it lights a Russian sable
     Running circles in the skies. . . .

Till I go running after,
     Obeying all your whims—
For the liquor of your laughter
     And the lacquer of your limbs.

EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 9

WHEN frogs' legs on a plate are brought to me
     As though I were divinity in France,
I feel as God would feel were He to see
     Imperial Russians dance.

These people's thoughts and gestures and concerns
     Move like a Russian ballet made of eggs;
A bright-smirched canvas heaven heaves and burns
     Above their arms and legs.

Society hops this way and that, well-taught;
     But while I watch, in cloudy state,
I feel as God would feel if he were brought
     Frogs' legs on a plate.

ANNE KNISH
Opus 187

I DO not know very much,
But I know this—
That the storms of contempt that sweep over us,
Ready to blast any edifice before then
Rise from the fathomless maelstrom
Of contempt for ourselves.
If there be a god,
May he preserve me
From striking with these lightnings
Those whom I love.

     Saying which,
Zarathustra strolled on
Down Fifth Avenue.

     The last three lines
Are symptomatic.

EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 104

HOW terrible to entertain a lunatic!
To keep his earnestness from coming close!

A Madagascar land-crab once
Lifted blue claws at me
And rattled long black eyes
That would have got me
Had I not been gay.

ANNE KNISH
Opus 182

"HE'S the remnant of a suit that has been drowned;
That's what decided me," said Clarice.
"And so I married him,
I really wanted a merman;
And this slimy quality in him
Won me.
No one forbade the banns.
Ergo—will you love me?"

EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 101

HE not only plays
One note
But holds another note
Away from it—
As a lover
Lifts
A waft of hair
From loved eyes.

The piano shivers,
When he touches it,
And the leg shines.

ANNE KNISH
Opus 181

SKEPTICAL cat,
Calm your eyes, and come to me.
For long ago, in some palmed forest,
I too felt claws curling
Within my fingers . . .
Moons wax and wane;
My eyes, too, once narrowed and widened
Why do you shrink back?
Come to me: let me pat you—
Come, vast-eyed one . . .
Or I will spring upon you
And with steel-hook fingers
Tear you limb from limb. . . .

There were twins in my cradle. . . .

EMANUEL MORGAN
Opus 78

I AM beset by liking so many people.
What can I do but hide my face away?—
Lest, looking up in love, I see no eyes or lids
In the