Two Poems

The Rose Is

Approach the Temple of the Rose.
The verticals are heliotrope.
Approach the old, familiar rose.

The shade advances to its doom;
The rose is dead. The rose is old.
The rose is in the shade of gloom:

The verticals are heliotrope:
The horizontal empty air
Lifts the full moon. Heliotrope,

The shadows fall. The moon's a rose.
The garden breathes. The shade is dead:
The rose is as the morning's rose.

The old, familiar shade retreats,
Retreats the horizontal night.
The moon retreats from her own light.

The rose begins. Approach the rose.
Her Temple banishes the shade.
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