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Chess

I

Each in his corner, the players
Govern their slow pieces. The board
Keeps them till dawn in its severe
Ambit of two-color hate.

Within irradiate magic rigors
Of form: Rook Homeric, light
Knight, armed Queen, final King,
Oblique Bishop and aggressor Pawns.

When the players are done
And time has consumed them,
The rite will not have ceased.

In the East this war caught fire,
The whole world its amphitheater now.
Like that other one, this game is infinite.



II

Tenuous King, slant Bishop, furious
Queen, direct Rook and crafty Pawn
Upon the black-and-white of the way
Seek and engage their armed battle.

They do not know the signal hand
Of the player governs their destiny,
That an adamantine rigor
Subjects their fancy and their journey.

The player too is a prisoner
(The sentence is Omar's) of another board
Of black nights and white days.

God moves the player, he the piece.
What God-hid god the weft begins
Of dust and time and dream and agonies?