By H. D.
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
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.
Source: Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2004)
Poet Bio
In a career that spanned five decades, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) was given many labels: Imagist, feminist, mythologist, and mystic. Her abiding concern, though, was to explore and represent her personal experience as a poet and a woman. In addition to poetry, she published novels, short stories, and two epic poems on war: Trilogy and Helen in Egypt.
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All Greece hates
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the lustre as of olives
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and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
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hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees unmoved,
God’s daughter,...
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a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
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uncurls his coral feet.
Through the deep purple
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of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
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Of Tribulation, these are They,
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— Emily Dickinson
Pained, permanent
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Exposed
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a Santa’s grotto
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quartz crusts
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a mouth
all teeth
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toughened glass
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