H.D.
- ARE you alive?
- I touch you.
- You quiver like a sea-fish.
- I cover you with my net.
- What are you -- banded one?
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.
- 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 as your bark,
- you are lifted up,
- aye -- though it hiss
- to cover you with froth.
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 root 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.
- 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?
- 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.
[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.