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