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Thisbe
REUEL. DENNEY
THISBE
When ghosts and duties call our bones to tension
In the metropolis of setbacks, when its moats are
A full moon's urgent arms with barges gemmed, :
Then sellers sleep. The city of Semiramis
Is all a human signet stamped on clay.
And yet how palms play on the silent wind,
To sing of her. Round as some huckster's melon,
Her pulp and pips are praised in every alley
By trees awake and men asleep in doorways
Counting their gardens, in a broker's doze.
What brought the brick so high and held it there?
Why is this roofline grand and what it is ?
Bridges salaam themselves, as if her coming -
Were of tall masts. The fountain-fed hotels
Assume her shoulders and her nipple eyes.
The moon declares: a city grows its shadow
As, near a lamp, her turning thigh's penumbra .
Darts a dark oval as she turns to rise. :
REVEL DENNEY