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Sleeping Beauty

     after Valêry

 

She sleeps in a palace of rose innocence

Under day's murmurs in the slow vine's hold;

From coral walls is culled an utterance

When stray birds come and pick at her rings of gold.

She does not heed the silver rains that fall

Through palace silences, nor does she hear

In the east wood the flute's insistent call

Rife with sweet rumors of awakening there.

Prodigal sunsets dote upon her, till,

Racing to reassert its old hauteur,

A late persimmon moon scatters its chill.

No, nothing here is known—nothing to learn,

Only time's fingerings which will never stir

In her French arms the tendons of concern.

 

Moore Moran

 

 

© 1956; originally printed in Sequoia.  Reprinted by
permission of the author.

Background
by Grapholina


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