TRILOGY Robert J. Morris I. The two, these young, lie naked on the shore, Alone, and drugged with passion. Sweat and sand, For straight above this moving mass of flesh A hot Apollo, panicked, glances down: A movement, glitter, on the wrinkled beach, And gouging all the sky with gold turned green, like flowers below, He pleads, Against his will. II. A hiss! A serpent walks the sand Where young and waste and beach lie hot and bright, careless....sealess. He wags his three-forked tongue at aching ancient waiting....Evening. He walks across a green amoeba on the shore And flicks his tail to clear a path Of broken plates...decayed food...and filthy cups Left not, cared not, by young. There is no salty flood tide To fill the cavern at the shore's sharp edge. Two peaks, behind the young, who keep a dry and stony watch beside An unseen third.... They witness the slimy rising heat In quaking supplication to a sun they do not love.... But supplicate in snowy fear.... The serpent moves his dry and dusty eyes And barely moves the sugar granules underneath And through the breezeless vacuum drifts The smell of old dead flowers. 3