H. D.
Reading edition
THE POOL
Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you—banded one?
THE GARDEN
I
You are clear, O rose, cut in rock, hard as the descent of hail. I could scrape the colour from the petal, like spilt dye from a rock. If I could break you I could break a tree. If I could stir I could break a tree, I could break you.
II
O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it sideways. Fruit can not drop through this thick air: fruit can not fall into heat that presses up and blunts the points of pears and rounds the grapes. Cut the heat, plough through it, turning it on either side of your path.
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.
SEA IRIS
I
Weed, moss-weed, root tangled in sand, sea-iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken, and you print a shadow like a thin twig. Fortunate one, scented and stinging, rigid myrrh-bud, camphor-flower, sweet and salt—you are wind in our nostrils.
II
Do the murex-fishers drench you as they pass? Do your roots drag up colour from the sand? Have they slipped gold under you; rivets of gold? Band of iris-flowers above the waves, You are painted blue, painted like a fresh prow stained among the salt weeds.
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 sands, you are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind. Can the spice-rose drip such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf?
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.
ORION DEAD
[Artemis speaks]
The cornel-trees uplift from the furrows, the roots at their bases strike lower through the barley-sprays. So arise and face me. I am poisoned with the rage of song. I once pierced the flesh of the wild-deer, now am I afraid to touch the blue and the gold-veined hyacinths? I will tear the full flowers and the little heads of the grape-hyacinths. I will strip the life from the bulb until the ivory layers lie like narcissus petals on the black earth. Arise, lest I bend an ash-tree into a taut bow, and slay—and tear all the roots from the earth. The cornel-wood blazes and strikes through the barley-sprays, but I have lost heart for this. I break a staff. I break the tough branch. I know no light in the woods. I have lost pace with the winds.