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Pear Tree

SILVER dust

lifted from the earth,

higher than my arms can reach,

you have mounted.

O silver,

higher than my arms can reach

you front us with great mass;

no flower ever opened

so staunch a white leaf,

no flower ever parted silver

from such rare silver;

O white pear,

your flower-tufts,

thick on the branch,

bring summer and ripe fruits

in their purple hearts.

H.D.

Heat

O WIND, rend open the heat,

cut apart the heat,

rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop

through this thick air-

fruit cannot fall into heat

that presses up and blunts

the points of pears

and rounds the grapes.

Cut through the heat-

plow through it

turning it on either side

of your path.

H.D.

Adonis

1.

EACH of us like you

has died once,

has passed through drift of wood-leaves,

cracked and bent

and tortured and unbent

in the winter-frost,

the burnt into gold points,

lighted afresh,

crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf,

gold turned and re-welded

in the sun;

each of us like you

has died once,

each of us has crossed an old wood-path

and found the winter-leaves

so golden in the sun-fire

that even the live wood-flowers

were dark.

2.

Not the gold on the temple-front

where you stand

is as gold as this,

not the gold that fastens your sandals,

nor thee gold reft

through your chiselled locks,

is as gold as this last year's leaf,

not all the gold hammered and wrought

and beaten

on your lover's face.

brow and bare breast

is as golden as this:

each of us like you

has died once,

each of us like you

stands apart, like you

fit to be worshipped.

H.D.

Oread

WHIRL up, sea--

whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines

on our rocks,

hurl your green over us,

cover us with your pools of fir.

H.D.

Orchard

I SAW the first pear

as it fell--

the honey-seeking, golden-banded,

the yellow swarm

was not more fleet than I,

(spare us from loveliness)

and I fell prostrate

crying:

you have flayed us

with your blossoms,

spare us the beauty

of fruit-trees.

The honey-seeking

paused not,

the air thundered their song,

and I alone was prostrate.

O rough-hewn

god of the orchard,

I bring you an offering--

do you, alone unbeautiful,

son of the god,

spare us from loveliness:

these fallen hazel-nuts,

stripped late of their green sheaths,

grapes, red-purple,

their berries

dripping with wine,

pomegranates already broken,

and shrunken figs

and quinces untouched,

I bring you as offering.

H.D.

From citron-bower

FROM citron-bower be her bed,

cut from branch of tree a-flower,

fashioned for her maidenhead.

From Lydian apples, sweet of hue,

cut the width of board and lathe,

carve the feet from myrtle-wood.

Let the palings of her bed

be quince and box-wood overlaid

with the scented bark of yew.

That all the wood in blossoming,

may calm her heart and cool her blood,

for losing of her maidenhood.

H.D.

Sea Poppies

AMBER husk

fluted with gold,

fruited on the sand

marked with a rich grain,

treasure

spilled near the shrub-pines

to bleach on the boulders:

your stalk has caught root

among wet pebbles

and drift flung by the sea

and grated shells

and split conch-shells.

Beautiful, wide-spread,

fire upon leaf,

what meadow yields

so fragrant a leaf

as your bright leaf?

H.D.

Sea Rose

ROSE, harsh rose,

marred and with stint of petals,

meagre flower, thin,

sparse of leaf,

more precious

than a wet rose

single on a stem--

you are caught in the drift.

Stunted, with small leaf,

you are flung on the sand,

you are lifted

in the crisp sand

that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose

drip such acrid fragrance

hardened in a leaf?

H.D.

The Helmsman

O BE swift--

we have always known you wanted us.

We fled inland with our flocks.

we pastured them in hollows,

cut off from the wind

and the salt track of the marsh.

We worshipped inland--

we stepped past wood-flowers,

we forgot your tang,

we brushed wood-grass.

We wandered from pine-hills

through oak and scrub-oak tangles,

we broke hyssop and bramble.

we caught flower and new bramble-fruit

in our hair: we laughed

as each branch whipped back,

we tore our feet in half-buried rocks

and knotted roots and acorn-cups.

We forgot--we worshipped,

we parted green from green.

we sought further thickets,

we dipped our ankles

through leaf-mould and earth.

and wood and wood-bank enchanted us--

and the feel of the clefts in the bark,

and the slope between tree and tree--

and a slender path strung field to field

and wood to wood

and hill to hill

and the forest after it.

We forgot--for a moment

tree-resin, tree-bark,

sweat of a torn branch

were sweet to taste.

We were enchanted with the fields,

the tufts of coarse grass

in the shorter grass--

we loved all this.

But now, our boat climbs--hesitates--drops--

climbs--hesitates--crawls back--

climbs--hesitates--

O be swift--

we have always known you wanted us.

H.D.

Pursuit

WHAT do I care

that the stream is trampled,

the sand on the stream-bank

still holds the print of your foot:

the heel is cut deep.

I see another mark on the grass ridge of the bank--

it points toward the wood-path

I have lost the third in the packed earth.

But here

a wild-hyacinth stalk is snapped:

the purple buds--half ripe--

show deep purple

where your heel pressed.

A patch of flowering grass,

low, trailing--

you brushed this:

the green stems show yellow-green

where you lifted--turned the earth-side

to the light:

this and a dead leaf-spine

split across,

show where you passed.

You were swift,swift!

here the forest ledge slopes--

rain has furrowed the roots.

Your hand caught at this;

the root snapped under your weight.

I can almost follow the note

where it touched this slender tree

and the next answered--

and the next.

And you climbed yet further!

you stopped by the dwarf-cornel--

whirled on your heels,

doubled on your track.

This is clear--

you fell on the downward slope,

you dragged a bruised thigh--you limped--

you clutched this larch.

Did your head, bent back,

Search further--

clear through the green leaf-moss

of the larch branches?

Did you clutch,

stammer with short breath and gasp:

wood-daemons grant life--

give life--I am almost lost.

For some wood-daemon

has lightened your steps.

I can find no trace of you

in the larch-cones and the underbrush.

H.D.

Sea Lily

REED,

slashed and torn

but doubly rich--

such great heads as yours

drift upon temple-steps,

but you are shattered

in the wind.

Myrtle-bark

is flecked from you,

scales are dashed

from your stem,

sand cuts your petal,

furrows it with hard edge,

like flint

on a bright stone.

Yet though the whole wind

slash at your bark,

you are lifted up,

aye--though it hiss

to cover you with froth.

H.D.

The Gift

INSTEAD of pearls--a wrought clasp--

a bracelet--will you accept this?

You know the script--

you will start, wonder:

what is left, what phrase

after last night? This:

The world is yet unspoiled for you,

you wait, expectant--

you are like the children

who haunt your own steps

for chance bits--a comb

that may have slipped,

a gold tassle, unravelled,

plucked from your scarf,

twirled by your slight fingers

into the street--

a flower dropped.

Do not think me unaware,

I who have snatched at you

as the street-child clutched

at the seed-pearls you spilt

that hot day

when your necklace snapped.

Do not dream that I speak

as one defrauded of delight,

sick, shaken by each heart-beat

or paralyzed, stretched at length,

who gasps:

these ripe pears

are bitter to the taste,

this spiced wine, poison, corrupt.

I cannot walk--

who would walk?

Life is a scavanger's pit--I escape--

I only, rejecting it,

lying here on this couch.

Your garden sloped to the beach,

myrtle overran the paths,

honey and amber flecked each leaf,

the citron-lily head--

one among many--

weighed there, over-sweet.

The myrrh-hyacinth

spread across low slopes,

violets streaked black ridges

through the grass.

The house, too, was like this,

over painted, over lovely—

the world is like this.

Sleepless nights,

I remember the initiates,

their gesture, their calm glance.

I have heard how in rapt thought,

in vision, they speak

with another race,

more beautiful, more intense than this.

I could laugh--

more beautiful, more intense?

Perhaps that other life

is contrast always to this.

I reason:

I have lived as they

in their inmost rites--

they endure the tense nerves

through the moment of ritual.

I endure from moment to moment--

days pass all alike,

tortured, intense.

This I forgot last night:

you must not be blamed,

it is not your fault;

as a child, a flower--any flower

tore my breast--

meadow-chickory, a common grass-tip,

a leaf shadow, a flower tint

unexpected on a winter-branch.

I reason:

another life holds what this lacks,

a sea, unmoving, quiet--

not forcing our strength

to rise to it, beat on beat—

a stretch of sand,

no garden beyond, strangling

with its myrrh-lilies--

a hill, not set with black violets

but stones, stones, bare rocks,

dwarf-trees, twisted, no beauty

to distract-—to crowd

madness upon madness.

Only a still place

and perhaps some outer horror

some hideousness to stamp beauty,

a mark—no changing it now—-

on our hearts.

I send no string of pearls,

no bracelet-—accept this.

H.D.

Huntress

COME, blunt your spear with us,

our pace is hot

and our bare heels

in the heel-prints--

we stand tense--do you see--

are you already beaten

by the chase?

We lead the pace

for the wind on the hills,

the low hill is spattered

with loose earth--

our feet cut into the crust

as with spears.

We climbed the ploughed land,

dragged the seed from the clefts,

broke the clods with our heels,

whirled with a parched cry

into the woods:

Can you come,

can you come,

can you follow the hound trail,

can you trample the hot froth?

Spring up--sway forward--

follow the quickest one,

aye, though you leave the trail

and drop exhausted at our feet.

H.D.

Sea Violet

THE white violet

is scented on its stalk,

the sea-violet

fragile as agate,

lies fronting all the wind

among the torn shells

on the sand-bank.

The greater blue violets

flutter on the hill,

but who would change for these

who would change for these

one root of the white sort?

Violet

your grasp is frail

on the edge of the sand-hill,

but you catch the light--

frost, a star edges with its fire.

H.D.

The Night

THE night has cut

each from each

and curled the petals

back from the stalk

and under it in crisp rows;

under at an unfaltering pace,

under till the rinds break,

back till each bent leaf

is parted from its stalk;

under at a grave pace,

under till the leaves

are bent back

till they drop upon earth,

back till they are all broken.

O night,

you take the petals

of the roses in your hand,

but leave the stark core

of the rose

to perish on the branch.

H.D.

Pygmalion

I

S

HALL I let myself be caught

in my own light,

shall I let myself be broken

in my own heat,

or shall I cleft the rock as of old

and break my own fire

with its surface ?

Does this fire thwart me

and my craft,

or my work--

does it cloud this light;

which is the god,

which the stone

the god takes for his use ?

II

Which am I,

The stone or the power

that lifts the rock from the earth ?

Am I the master of this fire,

is this fire my own strength ?

Am I the master of this

swirl upon swirl of light--

have I made it as in old times

I made the gods from the rock ?

Have I made this fire from myself,

or is this arrogance--

is this fire a god

that seeks me in the dark ?

III

I made image upon image for my use,

I made image upon image, for the grace

of Pallas was my flint

and my help was Hephsstos.

I made god upon god

step from the cold rock,

I made the gods less than men

for I was a man and they my work.

And now what is it that has come to pass

for fire has shaken my hand,

my strivings are dust.

IV

Now what is it that has come to pass ?

Over my head, fire stands,

my marbles are alert.

Each of the gods, perfect,

cries out from a perfect throat:

you are useless,
no marble can bind me,
no stone suggest.

They have melted into the light

and I am desolate,

they have melted,

each from his plinth,

each one departs.

They have gone,

what agony can express my grief?

Each from his marble base

has stepped into the light

and my work is for naught.

VI

Now am I the power

that has made this fire

as of old I made the gods

start from the rocks--

am I the god

or does this fire carve me

for its use ?

H.D.

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