H. D.

I asked of your face: is it dark, set beneath heavy locks, circled with stiff ivy-fruit, clear, cut with great hammer-stroke, brow, nose and mouth, mysterious and far distant from my sense. I asked: can he from his portals of ebony carved with grapes, turn toward the earth? I even spoke this blasphemy in my thoughts: the earth is evil, given over to evil— we are lost.

And in a moment you have altered this. Beneath my feet, the rocks have no weight against the rush of cyclamen, fire-tipped, ivory-pointed, white. Beneath my feet the flat rocks have no strength against the deep purple flower-embers, cyclamen, wine spilled.

As I stood among the bare rocks where salt lay, peeled and flaked in its white drift, I thought I would be the last you would want, I thought I would but scatter salt on the ripe grapes. I thought the vine-leaves would curl under, leaf and leaf-point at my touch, the yellow and green grapes would have dropped, my very glance must shatter the purple fruit. I had drawn away into the salt, myself, a shell emptied of life.

I pluck the cyclamen red by wine-red and place the petals stiff ivory and bright fire against my flesh. Now I am powerless to draw back for the sea is cyclamen-purple, cyclamen-red, colour of the last grapes, colour of the purple of the flowers, cyclamen-coloured and dark.

Each of us like you has died once, each of us like you has passed through drift of wood-leaves, cracked and bent and tortured and unbent in the winter frost— then burnt into gold points, lighted afresh, crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf, gold turned and re-welded in the sun-heat. 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.

Not the gold on the temple-front where you stand, is as gold as this, not the gold that fastens your sandal, nor the 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.

Shall 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?

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?

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 Hephæstos. 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.

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.

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?

So you have swept me back— I who could have walked with the live souls above the earth, I who could have slept among the live flowers at last. So for your arrogance and your ruthlessness I am swept back where dead lichens drip dead cinders upon moss of ash. So for your arrogance I am broken at last, I who had lived unconscious, who was almost forgot. If you had let me wait I had grown from listlessness into peace— if you had let me rest with the dead, I had forgot you and the past.

Here only flame upon flame and black among the red sparks, streaks of black and light grown colourless. Why did you turn back, that hell should be reinhabited of myself thus swept into nothingness? Why did you turn, why did you glance back— why did you hesitate for that moment, why did you bend your face caught with the flame of the upper earth above my face? What was it that crossed my face with the light from yours and your glance? What was it you saw in my face— the light of your own face, the fire of your own presence? What had my face to offer but reflex of the earth— hyacinth colour caught from the raw fissure in the rock where the light struck, and the colour of azure crocuses and the bright surface of gold crocuses and of the wind-flower, swift in its veins as lightning and as white.

Saffron from the fringe of the earth, wild saffron that has bent over the sharp edge of earth, all the flowers that cut through the earth, all, all the flowers are lost. Everything is lost, everything is crossed with black, black upon black and worse than black— this colourless light.

Fringe upon fringe of blue crocuses, crocuses, walled against blue of themselves, blue of that upper earth, blue of the depth upon depth of flowers— lost! Flowers— if I could have taken once my breath of them, enough of them, more than earth, even than of the upper earth, had passed with me beneath the earth! If I could have caught up from the earth, the whole of the flowers of the earth, if once I could have breathed into myself the very golden crocuses and the red, and the very golden hearts of the first saffron, the whole of the golden mass, the whole of the great fragrance, I could have dared the loss.

So for your arrogance and your ruthlessness I have lost the earth and the flowers of the earth, and the live souls above the earth, and you who passed across the light and reached ruthless— you who have your own light, who are to yourself a presence, who need no presence. Yet for all your arrogance and your glance, I tell you this— such loss is no loss, such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls of blackness, such terror is no loss. Hell is no worse than your earth above the earth, hell is no worse— no—nor your flowers nor your veins of light nor your presence, a loss. My hell is no worse than yours though you pass among the flowers and speak with the spirits above earth.

Against the black I have more fervour than you in all the splendour of that place, against the blackness and the stark grey I have more light! And the flowers— if I should tell you, you would turn from your own fit paths toward hell— turn again and glance back and I would sink into a place even more terrible than this.

At least I have the flowers of myself and my thoughts—no god can take that! I have the fervour of myself for a presence and my own spirit for light. And my spirit with its loss knows this: though small against the black, small against the formless rocks, hell must break before I am lost. Before I am lost, hell must open like a red rose for the dead to pass.