Chapter 2

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 lust 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 God. 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 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 gleaming whirl of day, Lest, reaching for the fingers of love, I know not which are they, Lest the dear-lipped multitude, Kissing me, choke me dead!--

O green eyes in the breakers, White heave unquieted, What can I do but dive again, again--again-- To hide my head!

ANNE KNISH _Opus 135_

IN a tomb of Argolis, Under an arch of great stones, Where my eyes were sightless, groping, I touched this figment of clay.

Forgotten vase of immemorial Greece, Colorless form! I have entered to the blind dark Of the tomb where you have slept forever And with the dreams of my importunate hands I touch you in the profound darkness.

You are cold and estranged; Yet the ends of my fingers cling to your porous surface. You are thin and very tall; My palm can cover your mouth. Your lip curves but a little; Around your throat My two hands meet, And then part as I follow the swelling Rhythm that downward widens, And I pass around and under, And the returning line Ebbs home.

Beneath your feet I touch cold marble; My hand returns To sleep upon your breast Dreaming it warm.

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 79_

ONLY the wise can see me in the mist, For only lovers know that I am here After his piping, shall the organist Be portly and appear?

Pew after pew, Wave after wave . . . Shall the digger dig and then undo His own dear grave?

Hear me in the playing Of a big brass band . . . See me, straying With children hand in hand . . .

Smell me, a dead fish . . . Taste me, a rotten tree. . . . Someday touch me, all you wish, In the wide sea.

End of Project Gutenberg's Spectra, by Arthur Ficke and Witter Bynner