es in wine,
And there are Gothic vaults of sleep.

My cathedral
Has one great spire
Tawny in the sunlight.
Gargoyles haunt its nave;
High up amid its dark-arches
Forgotten songs live shadowy.
Gold and sardonyx
Deck its altars.
Its mighty roof
Is copper rivering with the rain.

Tomorrow lightning swords will come
And thunder of cannon.
They will unrivet this roof
Of mighty copper.
Before the eyes of my gargoyles,
In the sound of my forgotten songs,
They will take it.
And as the rain sluices down
I shall have to follow my roof into the war.

EMANUEL MORGAN
_Opus 15_

DESPAIR comes when all comedy
Is tame
And there is left no tragedy
In any name,
When die round and wounded breathing
Of love upon the breast
Is not so glad a sheathing
As an old brown vest.

Asparagus is feathery and tall,
And the hose lies rotting by the garden-wall.

ANNE KNISH
_Opus 118_

IF bathing were a virtue, not a lust,
I would be dirtiest.

To some, housecleaning is a holy rite.
For myself, houses would be empty
But for the golden motes dancing in sunbeams.

Tax-assessors frequently overlook valuables.
Today they noted my jade.
But my memory of you escaped them.

EMANUEL MORGAN
_Opus 7_

BEYOND her lips in the dark are a man's feet
Composed and dead . . .
In the light between her lips is a moving tongue-rip sweet,
Red.

Her arms are his white robes,
They cover a king,
His ornaments her crescent lobes
And two moons on a string.

Sheba, Sheba, Proserpina, Salome,
See, I am come!--king, god, saint!--
With the stone of a volcano O show that you know me,
Pound till the true blood pricks through the paint!

Twitch of the dead man's feet if he remembers
A bunch of grapes and a ripped-open gown.--
And the live man's eyes are night after embers,
Two black spots on a white-faced down . . .

And in the dawn, lava . . . rolling down . . .
Down-rolling lava on an up-pointing town.

ANNE KNISH
_Opus 67_

I WOULD not in the early morning
Start my mind on its inevitable journey
Toward the East.
There are white domes somewhere
Under that blue enameled sky, white domes, white domes;
Therefore even the cream
Is safest yellow.
Cream is better than lemon
In tea at breakfast
I think of tigers as eating lemons.
Thank God this tea comes from the green grocer,
Not from Ceylon.

EMANUEL MORGAN
_Opus 13_

O PEACOCK-F