Title: SEA GARDEN
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Author: H. D.
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PDF Version: 1.2
Page No 1
SEA GARDEN
H. D.
Page No 2
Table of Contents
SEA GARDEN....................................................................................................................................................1
H. D. .........................................................................................................................................................1
SEA ROSE ...............................................................................................................................................1
THE HELMSMAN ..................................................................................................................................2
THE SHRINE..........................................................................................................................................3
MIDDAY ...............................................................................................................................................5
PURSUIT .................................................................................................................................................6
THE CONTEST .......................................................................................................................................7
SEA LILY ................................................................................................................................................8
THE WIND SLEEPERS ..........................................................................................................................9
THE GIFT ................................................................................................................................................9
EVENING ..............................................................................................................................................12
SHELTERED GARDEN .......................................................................................................................12
SEA POPPIES.......................................................................................................................................13
LOSS ......................................................................................................................................................14
HUNTRESS ...........................................................................................................................................15
GARDEN ...............................................................................................................................................16
SEA VIOLET .........................................................................................................................................17
THE CLIFF TEMPLE...........................................................................................................................17
ORCHARD ............................................................................................................................................19
SEA GODS............................................................................................................................................20
ACON....................................................................................................................................................21
NIGHT...................................................................................................................................................22
PRISONERS ..........................................................................................................................................23
STORM ..................................................................................................................................................24
SEA IRIS...............................................................................................................................................25
HERMES OF THE WAYS ....................................................................................................................25
PEAR TREE..........................................................................................................................................27
CITIES...................................................................................................................................................27
[The city is peopled]..............................................................................................................................29
SEA GARDEN
i
Page No 3
SEA GARDEN
H. D.
SEA ROSE
THE HELMSMAN
THE SHRINE
MIDDAY
PURSUIT
THE CONTEST
SEA LILY
THE WIND SLEEPERS
THE GIFT
EVENING
SHELTERED GARDEN
SEA POPPIES
LOSS
HUNTRESS
GARDEN
SEA VIOLET
THE CLIFF TEMPLE
ORCHARD
SEA GODS
ACON
NIGHT
PRISONERS
STORM
SEA IRIS
HERMES OF THE WAYS
PEAR TREE
CITIES
THE CITY IS PEOPLED
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.
SEA GARDEN 1
Page No 4
Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.
Can the spicerose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?
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 woodflowers,
we forgot your tang,
we brushed woodgrass.
We wandered from pinehills
through oak and scruboak tangles,
we broke hyssop and bramble,
we caught flower and new bramblefruit
in our hair: we laughed
as each branch whipped back,
we tore our feet in half buried rocks
and knotted roots and acorncups.
We forgotwe worshipped,
we parted green from green,
we sought further thickets,
we dipped our ankles
through leafmould and earth,
and wood and woodbank 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 forgotfor a moment
treeresin, treebark,
SEA GARDEN
THE HELMSMAN 2
Page No 5
sweat of a torn branch
were sweet to the taste.
We were enchanted with the fields,
the tufts of coarse grass
in the shorter grass
we loved all this.
But now, our boat climbshesitatesdrops
climbshesitatescrawls back
climbshesitates
O be swift
we have always known you wanted us.
THE SHRINE
("SHE WATCHES OVER THE SEA")
I
ARE your rocks shelter for ships
have you sent galleys from your beach,
are you gradeda safe crescent
where the tide lifts them back to port
are you full and sweet,
tempting the quiet
to depart in their trading ships?
Nay, you are great, fierce, evil
you are the landblight
you have tempted men
but they perished on your cliffs.
Your lights are but dank shoals,
slate and pebble and wet shells
and seaweed fastened to the rocks.
It was evilevil
when they found you,
when the quiet men looked at you
they sought a headland
shaded with ledge of cliff
from the windblast.
But youyou are unsheltered,
cut with the weight of wind
you shudder when it strikes,
then lift, swelled with the blast
you sink as the tide sinks,
you shrill under hail, and sound
thunder when thunder sounds.
You are useless
SEA GARDEN
THE SHRINE 3
Page No 6
when the tides swirl
your boulders cut and wreck
the staggering ships.
II
You are useless,
O grave, O beautiful,
the landsmen tell itI have heard
you are useless.
And the wind sounds with this
and the sea
where rollers shot with blue
cut under deeper blue.
O but stay tender, enchanted
where wavelengths cut you
apart from all the rest
for we have found you,
we watch the splendour of you,
we thread throat on throat of freesia
for your shelf.
You are not forgot,
O plunder of lilies,
honey is not more sweet
than the salt stretch of your beach.
III
Staystay
but terror has caught us now,
we passed the men in ships,
we dared deeper than the fisherfolk
and you strike us with terror
O bright shaft.
Flame passes under us
and sparks that unknot the flesh,
sorrow, splitting bone from bone,
splendour athwart our eyes
and rifts in the splendour,
sparks and scattered light.
Many warned of this,
men said:
there are wrecks on the forebeach,
wind will beat your ship,
there is no shelter in that headland,
it is useless waste, that edge,
that front of rock
SEA GARDEN
THE SHRINE 4
Page No 7
seagulls clang beyond the breakers,
none venture to that spot.
IV
But hail
as the tide slackens,
as the wind beats out,
we hail this shore
we sing to you,
spirit between the headlands
and the further rocks.
Though oakbeams split,
though boats and seamen flounder,
and the strait grind sand with sand
and cut boulders to sand and drift
your eyes have pardoned our faults,
your hands have touched us
you have leaned forward a little
and the waves can never thrust us back
from the splendour of your ragged coast.
MIDDAY
The light beats upon me.
I am startled
a split leaf crackles on the paved floor
I am anquisheddefeated.
A slight wind shakes the seedpods
my thoughts are spent
as the black seeds.
My thoughts tear me,
I dread their fever.
I am scattered in its whirl.
I am scattered like
the hot shrivelled seeds.
The shrivelled seeds
are spilt on the path
the grass bends with dust,
the grape slips
under its crackled leaf:
yet far beyond the spent seedpods,
and the blackened stalks of ming,
the poplar is bright on the hill,
the poplar spreads out,
deeprooted among trees.
SEA GARDEN
MIDDAY 5
Page No 8
O poplar, you are great among the hillstones,
while I perish on the path
among the crevices of the rocks.
PURSUIT
What do I care
that the stream is trampled,
the sand on the streambank
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 woodpath
I have lost the third in the packed earth.
But here
a wildhyacinth stalk is snapped:
the purple budshalf ripe
show deep purple
where your heel pressed.
A patch of flowering grass,
low, trailing
you brushed this:
the green stems show yellowgreen
where you liftedturned the earthside
to the light:
this and a dead leafspine
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 dwarfcornel
whirled on your heels,
doubled on your track.
This is clear
you fell on the downward slope,
SEA GARDEN
PURSUIT 6
Page No 9
you dragged a bruised thighyou limped
you clutched this larch.
Did your head, bent back,
Search further
clear through the green leafmoss
of the larch branches?
Did you clutch,
stammer with short breath and gasp:
wooddaemons grant life
give lifeI am almost lost.
For some wooddaemon
has lightened your steps.
I can find no trace of you
in the larchcones and the underbrush.
THE CONTEST
I
YOUR stature is modelled
with straight tooledge:
you are chiselled like rocks
that are eaten into by the sea.
With the turn and grasp of your wrist
and the chords' stretch,
there is a glint like worn brass.
The ridge of your breast is taut,
and under each the shadow is sharp,
and between the clenched muscles
of your slender hips.
From the circle of your cropped hair
there is light,
and about your male torse
and the footarch and the straight ankle.
II
You stand rigid and mighty
granite and the ore in rocks;
a great band clasps your forehead
and its heavy twists of gold.
You are whitea limb of cypress
bent under a weight of snow.
SEA GARDEN
THE CONTEST 7
Page No 10
You are splendid,
your arms are fire;
you have entered the hillstraits
a sea treads upon the hillslopes.
III
Myrtle is about your head,
you have bent and caught the spray:
each leaf is sharp
against the lift and furrow
of your bound hair.
The narcissus has copied the arch
of your slight breast:
your feet are citronflowers,
your knees, cut from whiteash,
your thighs are rockcistus.
Your chin lifts straight
from the hollow of your curved throat.
your shoulders are level
they have melted rare silver
for their breadth.
SEA LILY
REED,
slashed and torn
but doubly rich
such great heads as yours
drift upon templesteps,
but you are shattered
in the wind.
Myrtlebark
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,
ayethough it hiss
to cover you with froth.
SEA GARDEN
SEA LILY 8
Page No 11
THE WIND SLEEPERS
WHITER
than the crust
left by the tide,
we are stung by the hurled sand
and the broken shells.
We no longer sleep
in the wind
we awoke and fled
through the city gate.
Tear
tear us an altar,
tug at the cliffboulders,
pile them with the rough stones
we no longer
sleep in the wind,
propitiate us.
Chant in a wail
that never halts,
pace a circle and pay tribute
with a song.
When the roar of a dropped wave
breaks into it,
pour meted words
of seahawks and gulls
and seabirds that cry
discords.
THE GIFT
INSTEAD of pearlsa wrought clasp
a braceletwill 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 bitsa comb
SEA GARDEN
THE WIND SLEEPERS 9
Page No 12
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 streetchild clutched
at the seedpearls you spilt
that hot day
when your necklace snapped.
Do not dream that I speak
as one defrauded of delight,
sick, shaken by each heartbeat
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 pitI 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 citronlily head
one among many
weighed there, oversweet.
The myrrhhyacinth
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,
SEA GARDEN
THE WIND SLEEPERS 10
Page No 13
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 flowerany flower
tore my breast
meadowchickory, a common grasstip,
a leaf shadow, a flower tint
unexpected on a winterbranch.
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 myrrhlilies
a hill, not set with black violets
but stones, stones, bare rocks,
dwarftrees, twisted, no beauty
to distractto crowd
madness upon madness.
Only a still place
and perhaps some outer horror
some hideousness to stamp beauty,
a markno changing it now
on our hearts.
I send no string of pearls,
no braceletaccept this.
SEA GARDEN
THE WIND SLEEPERS 11
Page No 14
EVENING
THE light passes
from ridge to ridge,
from flower to flower;
the hypaticas, widespread
under the light
grow faint
the petals reach inward,
the blue tips bend
toward the bluer heart
and the flowers are lost.
The cornelbuds are still white,
but shadows dart
from the cornelroots
black creeps from root to root,
each leaf
cuts another leaf on the grass,
shadow seeks shadow,
then both leaf
and leafshadow are lost.
SHELTERED GARDEN
I HAVE had enough.
I gasp for breath.
Every way ends, every road,
every footpath leads at last
to the hillcrest
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.
I have had enough
borderpinks, clovepinks, waxlilies,
herbs, sweetcress.
O for some sharp swish of a branch
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent
only border on border of scented pinks.
Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light
SEA GARDEN
EVENING 12
Page No 15
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?
Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
With a russet coat.
Or the melon
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste
it is better to taste of frost
the exquisite frost
than of wadding and of dead grass.
For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pinkstalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melonpatch,
break pear and quince
leave halftrees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.
O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
windtortured place.
SEA POPPIES
AMBER husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
SEA GARDEN
SEA POPPIES 13
Page No 16
marked with a rich grain,
treasure
spilled near the shrubpines
to bleach on the boulders:
your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conchshells.
Beautiful, widespread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?
LOSS
THE sea called
you faced the estuary,
you were drowned as the tide passed.
I am glad of this
at least you have escaped.
The heavy seamist stifles me.
I choke with each breath
a curious peril, this
the gods have invented
curious torture for us.
One of us, pierced in the flank,
dragged himself across the marsh,
he tore at the bayroots,
lost hold on the crumbling bank
Another crawledtoo late
for shelter under the cliffs.
I am glad the tide swept you out,
O beloved,
you of all this ghastly host
alone untouched,
your white flesh covered with salt
as with myrrh and burnt iris.
We were hemmed in this place,
so few of us, so few of us to fight
their sure lances,
SEA GARDEN
LOSS 14
Page No 17
the straight thrusteffortless
with slight life of muscle and shoulder.
So straightonly we were left,
the four of ussomehow shut off.
And the marsh dragged one back,
and another perished under the cliff,
and the tide swept you out.
Your feet cut steel on the paths,
I followed for the strength
of life and grasp.
I have seen beautiful feet
but never beauty welded with strength.
I marvelled at your height.
You stood almost level
with the lancebearers
and so slight.
And I wondered as you clasped
your shoulderstrap
at the strength of your wrist
and the turn of your young fingers,
and the lift of your shorn locks,
and the bronze
of your sunburnt neck.
All of this,
and the curious kneecap,
fitted above the wrought greaves,
and the sharp muscles of your back
which the tunic could not cover
the outline
no garment could deface.
I wonder if you knew how I watched,
how I crowded before the spearsmen
but the gods wanted you,
the gods wanted you back.
HUNTRESS
Come, blunt your spear with us,
our pace is hot
and our bare heels
in the heelprints
we stand tensedo you see
are you already beaten
SEA GARDEN
HUNTRESS 15
Page No 18
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 upsway forward
follow the quickest one,
aye, though you leave the trail
and drop exhausted at our feet.
GARDEN
I
YOU are clear
O rose, cut in rock,
hard as the descent of hail.
I could scrape the colour
from the petals
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 to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
SEA GARDEN
GARDEN 16
Page No 19
through this thick air
fruit cannot 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 VIOLET
THE white violet
is scented on its stalk,
the seaviolet
fragile as agate,
lies fronting all the wind
among the torn shells
on the sandbank.
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 sandhill,
but you catch the light
frost, a star edges with its fire.
THE CLIFF TEMPLE
I
GREAT, bright portal,
shelf of rock,
rocks fitted in long ledges,
rocks fitted to dark, to silver granite,
to lighter rock
clean cut, white against white.
Highhighand no hillgoat
tramplesno mountainsheep
has set foot on your fine grass;
you lift, you are theworldedge,
pillar for the skyarch.
SEA GARDEN
SEA VIOLET 17
Page No 20
The world heaved
we are next to the sky:
over us, seahawks shout,
gulls sweep past
the terrible breakers are silent
from this place.
Below us, on the rockedge,
where earth is caught in the fissures
of the jagged cliff,
a small tree stiffens in the gale,
it bendsbut its white flowers
are fragrant at this height.
And under and under,
the wind booms:
it whistles, it thunders,
it growlsit presses the grass
beneath its great feet.
II
I said:
for ever and for ever, must I follow you
through the stones?
I catch at youyou lurch:
you are quicker than my handgrasp.
I wondered at you.
I shouteddearmysteriousbeautiful
white myrtleflesh.
I was splintered and torn:
the hillpath mounted
swifter than my feet.
Could a daemon avenge this hurt,
I would cry to himcould a ghost,
I would shoutO evil,
follow this god,
taunt him with his evil and his vice.
III
Shall I hurl myself from here,
shall I leap and be nearer you?
Shall I drop, beloved, beloved,
ankle against ankle?
Would you pity me, O white breast?
If I woke, would you pity me,
would our eyes meet?
SEA GARDEN
SEA VIOLET 18
Page No 21
Have you heard,
do you know how I climbed this rock?
My breath caught, I lurched forward
I stumbled in the groundmyrtle.
Have you heard, O god seated on the cliff,
how far toward the ledges of your house,
how far I had to walk?
IV
Over me the wind swirls.
I have stood on your portal
and I know
you are further than this,
still further on another cliff.
ORCHARD
I saw the first pear
as it fell
the honeyseeking, goldenbanded,
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 fruittrees.
The honeyseeking
paused not,
the air thundered their song,
and I alone was prostrate.
O roughhewn
god of the orchard,
I bring you an offering
do you, alone unbeautiful,
son of the god,
spare us from loveliness:
these fallen hazelnuts,
stripped late of their green sheaths,
grapes, redpurple,
their berries
dripping with wine,
pomegranates already broken,
SEA GARDEN
ORCHARD 19
Page No 22
and shrunken figs
and quinces untouched,
I bring you as offering.
SEA GODS
I
THEY say there is no hope
sanddriftrocksrubble of the sea
the broken hulk of a ship,
hung with shreds of rope,
pallid under the cracked pitch.
they say there is no hope
to conjure you
no whip of the tongue to anger you
no hate of words
you must rise to refute.
They say you are twisted by the sea,
you are cut apart
by wavebreak upon wavebreak,
that you are misshapen by the sharp rocks,
broken by the rasp and afterrasp.
That you are cut, torn, mangled,
torn by the stress and beat,
no stronger than the strips of sand
along your ragged beach.
II
But we bring violets,
great massessingle, sweet,
woodviolets, streamviolets,
violets from a wet marsh.
Violets in clumps from hills,
tufts with earth at the roots,
violets tugged from rocks,
blue violets, moss, cliff, riverviolets.
Yellow violets' gold,
burnt with a rare tint
violets like red ash
among tufts of grass.
We bring deeppurple
birdfoot violets.
We bring the hyacinthviolet,
SEA GARDEN
SEA GODS 20
Page No 23
sweet, bare, chill to the touch
and violets whiter than the inrush
of your own white surf.
III
For you will come,
you will yet haunt men in ships,
you will trail across the fringe of strait
and circle the jagged rocks.
You will trail across the rocks
and wash them with your salt,
you will curl between sandhills
you will thunder along the cliff;
breakretreatget fresh strength
gather and pour weight upon the beach.
You will draw back,
and the ripple on the sandshelf
will be witness of your track.
O privetwhite, you will paint
the lintel of wet sand with froth.
You will bring myrrhbark
and drift laurelwood from hot coasts!
when you hurl highhigh
we will answer with a shout.
For you will come,
you will come,
you will answer our taut hearts,
you will break the lie of men's thoughts,
and cherish and shelter us.
ACON
I
BEAR me to Dictaeus,
and to the steep slopes;
to the river Erymanthus.
I choose spray of dittany,
cyperum, frail of flower,
buds of myrrh,
allhealing herbs,
close pressed in calathes.
For she lies panting,
drawing sharp breaths
SEA GARDEN
ACON 21
Page No 24
broken with harsh sobs,
she, Hyella,
whom no god pities.
II
Dryads
haunting the groves,
nereids
who dwell in wet caves,
for all the white leaves of olivebranch,
and early roses,
and ivy wreaths, woven gold berries,
which she once brought to your altars,
bear now ripe fruits from Arcadia,
and Assyrian wine
to shatter her fever.
The light of her face falls from its flower,
as a hyacinth,
hidden in a far valley,
perishes upon burnt grass.
Pales,
bring gifts,
bring your Phoenician stuffs,
and do you, fleetfooted nymphs,
bring offerings,
Illyrian iris,
and a branch of shrub,
and frailheaded poppies.
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.
SEA GARDEN
NIGHT 22
Page No 25
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.
PRISONERS
IT is strange that I should want
this sight of your face
we have had so much:
at any moment now I may pass,
stand near the gate,
do not speak
only reach if you can, your face
halffronting the passage
toward the light.
FateGod sends this as a mark,
a last token that we are not forgot,
lost in this turmoil,
about to be crushed out,
burned or stamped out
at best with sudden death.
The spearsman who brings this
will ask for the gold clasp
you wear under your coat.
I gave all I had left.
Press close to the portal,
my gate will soon clang
and your fellow wretches
will crowd to the entrance
be first at the gate.
Ah beloved, do not speak.
I write this in great haste
do not speak,
you may yet be released.
I am glad enough to depart
though I have never tasted life
as in these last weeks.
It is a strange life,
patterned in fire and letters
on the prison pavement.
If I glance up
it is written on the walls,
SEA GARDEN
PRISONERS 23
Page No 26
it is cut on the floor,
it is patterned across
the slope of the roof.
I am weakweak
last night if the guard
had left the gate unlocked
I could not have ventured to escape,.
but one thought serves me now
with strength.
As I pass down the corridor
past desperate faces at each cell,
your eyes and my eyes may meet.
You will be dark, unkempt,
but I pray for one glimpse of your face
why do I want this?
I who have seen you at the banquet
each flower of your hyacinthcirclet
white against your hair.
Why do I want this,
when even last night
you startled me from sleep?
You stood against the dark rock,
you grasped an elder staff.
So many nights
you have distracted me from terror.
Once you lifted a spearflower.
I remember how you stooped
to gather it
and it flamed, the leaf and shoot
and the threads, yellow, yellow
sheer till they burnt
to redpurple in the cup.
As I pass your celldoor
do not speak.
I was first on the list
They may forget you tried to shield me
as the horsemen passed.
STORM
You crash over the trees,
you crack the live branch
the branch is white,
the green crushed,
each leaf is rent like split wood.
SEA GARDEN
STORM 24
Page No 27
You burden the trees
with black drops,
you swirl and crash
you have broken off a weighted leaf
in the wind,
it is hurled out,
whirls up and sinks,
a green stone.
SEA IRIS
I
WEED, mossweed,
root tangled in sand,
seairis, brittle flower,
one petal like a shell
is broken,
and you print a shadow
like a thin twig.
Fortunate one,
scented and stinging,
rigid myrrhbud,
camphorflower,
sweet and saltyou are wind
in our nostrils.
II
Do the murexfishers
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 irisflowers
above the waves,
you are painted blue,
painted like a fresh prow
stained among the salt weeds.
HERMES OF THE WAYS
[I]
THE hard sand breaks,
and the grains of it
SEA GARDEN
SEA IRIS 25
Page No 28
are clear as wine.
Far off over the leagues of it,
the wind,
playing on the wide shore,
piles little ridges,
and the great waves
break over it.
But more than the manyfoamed ways
of the sea,
I know him
of the triple pathways,
Hermes,
who awaits.
Dubious,
facing three ways,
welcoming wayfarers,
he whom the seaorchard
shelters from the west,
from the east
weathers seawind;
fronts the great dunes.
Wind rushes
over the dunes,
and the coarse, saltcrusted grass
answers.
Heu,
it whips round my ankles!
II
Small is
this white stream,
flowing below ground
from the poplarshaded hill,
but the water is sweet.
Apples on the small trees
are hard,
too small,
too late ripened
by a desperate sun
that struggles through seamist.
The boughs of the trees
are twisted
by many bafflings;
twisted are
the smallleafed boughs.
SEA GARDEN
SEA IRIS 26
Page No 29
But the shadow of them
is not the shadow of the mast head
nor of the torn sails.
Hermes, Hermes,
the great sea foamed,
gnashed its teeth about me;
but you have waited,
were seagrass tangles with
shoregrass.
PEAR TREE
SILVER dust
lifted from the earth,
higher than my arms reach,
you have mounted,
O silver,
higher than my arms 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 flowertufts
thick on the branch
bring summer and ripe fruits
in their purple hearts.
CITIES
CAN we believeby an effort
comfort our hearts:
it is not waste all this,
not placed here in disgust,
street after street,
each patterned alike,
no grace to lighten
a single house of the hundred
crowded into one gardenspace.
Crowdedcan we believe,
not in utter disgust,
in ironical play
SEA GARDEN
PEAR TREE 27
Page No 30
but the maker of cities grew faint
with the beauty of temple
and space before temple,
arch upon perfect arch,
of pillars and corridors that led out
to strange courtyards and porches
where sunlight stamped
hyacinthshadows
black on the pavement.
That the maker of cities grew faint
with the splendour of palaces,
paused while the incenseflowers
from the incensetrees
dropped on the marblewalk,
thought anew, fashioned this
street after street alike.
For alas,
he had crowded the city so full
that men could not grasp beauty,
beauty was over them,
through them, about them,
no crevice unpacked with the honey,
rare, measureless.
So he built a new city,
ah can we believe, not ironically
but for new splendour
constructed new people
to lift through slow growth
to a beauty unrivalled yet
and created new cells,
hideous first, hideous now
spread larve across them,
not honey but seething life.
And in these dark cells,
packed street after street,
souls live, hideous yet
O disfigured, defaced,
with no trace of the beauty
men once held so light.
Can we think a few old cells
were leftwe are left
grains of honey,
old dust of stray pollen
dull on our torn wings,
we are left to recall the old streets?
Is our task the less sweet
SEA GARDEN
PEAR TREE 28
Page No 31
that the larve still sleep in their cells?
Or crawl out to attack our frail strength:
You are useless. We live.
We await great events.
We are spread through this earth.
We protect our strong race.
You are useless.
Your cell takes the place
of our young future strength.
Though they sleep or wake to torment
and wish to displace our old cells
thin rare gold
that their larve grow fat
is our task the less sweet?
Though we wander about,
find no honey of flowers in this waste,
is our task the less sweet
who recall the old splendour,
await the new beauty of cities?
[The city is peopled]
The city is peopled
with spirits, not ghosts, O my love:
Though they crowded between
and usurped the kiss of my mouth
their breath was your gift,
their beauty, your life.
SEA GARDEN
[The city is peopled] 29
Bookmarks
1. Table of Contents, page = 3
2. SEA GARDEN, page = 4
3. H. D., page = 4
4. SEA ROSE, page = 4
5. THE HELMSMAN, page = 5
6. THE SHRINE, page = 6
7. MID-DAY, page = 8
8. PURSUIT, page = 9
9. THE CONTEST, page = 10
10. SEA LILY, page = 11
11. THE WIND SLEEPERS, page = 12
12. THE GIFT, page = 12
13. EVENING, page = 15
14. SHELTERED GARDEN, page = 15
15. SEA POPPIES, page = 16
16. LOSS, page = 17
17. HUNTRESS, page = 18
18. GARDEN, page = 19
19. SEA VIOLET, page = 20
20. THE CLIFF TEMPLE, page = 20
21. ORCHARD, page = 22
22. SEA GODS, page = 23
23. ACON, page = 24
24. NIGHT, page = 25
25. PRISONERS, page = 26
26. STORM, page = 27
27. SEA IRIS, page = 28
28. HERMES OF THE WAYS, page = 28
29. PEAR TREE, page = 30
30. CITIES, page = 30
31. [The city is peopled], page = 32