Trilogy (New Directions Classic)

by Hilda Doolittle

  and sand and burnt sea-drift;

  but in the summer, as I watch

  the wave till its edge of foam

  touches the hot sand and instantly

  vanishes like snow on the equator,

  I would cry out, stay, stay;

  then I remember delicate enduring frost

  and its mid-winter dawn-pattern;

  in the hot noon-sun, I think of the grey

  opalescent winter-dawn; as the wave

  burns on the shingle, I think,

  you are less beautiful than frost;

  but it is also true that I pray,

  O, give me burning blue

  and brittle burnt sea-weed

  above the tide-line,

  as I stand, still unsatisfied,

  under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine.

  [5]

  Satisfied, unsatisfied,

  satiated or numb with hunger,

  this is the eternal urge,

  this is the despair, the desire to equilibrate

  the eternal variant;

  you understand that insistent calling,

  that demand of a given moment,

  the will to enjoy, the will to live,

  not merely the will to endure,

  the will to flight, the will to achievement,

  the will to rest after long flight;

  but who knows the desperate urge

  of those others—actual or perhaps now

  mythical birds—who seek but find no rest

  till they drop from the highest point of the spiral

  or fall from the innermost centre of the ever-narrowing circle?

  for they remember, they remember, as they sway and hover,

  what once was—they remember, they remember—

  they will not swerve—they have known bliss,

  the fruit that satisfies—they have come back—

  what if the islands are lost? what if the waters

  cover the Hesperides? they would rather remember—

  remember the golden apple-trees;

  O, do not pity them, as you watch them drop one by one,

  for they fall exhausted, numb, blind

  but in certain ecstasy,

  for theirs is the hunger

  for Paradise.

  [6]

  So I would rather drown, remembering—

  than bask on tropic atolls

  in the coral-seas; I would rather drown

  remembering—than rest on pine or fir-branch

  where great stars pour down

  their generating strength, Arcturus

  or the sapphires of the Northern Crown;

  I would rather beat in the wind, crying to these others:

  yours is the more foolish circling,

  yours is the senseless wheeling

  round and round—yours has no reason—

  I am seeking heaven;

  yours has no vision,

  I see what is beneath me, what is above me,

  what men say is-not—I remember,

  I remember, I remember—you have forgot:

  you think, even before it is half-over,

  that your cycle is at an end,

  but you repeat your foolish circling—again, again, again;

  again, the steel sharpened on the stone;

  again, the pyramid of skulls;

  I gave pity to the dead,

  O blasphemy, pity is a stone for bread,

  only love is holy and love’s ecstasy

  that turns and turns and turns about one centre,

  reckless, regardless, blind to reality,

  that knows the Islands of the Blest are there,

  for many waters can not quench love’s fire.

  [7]

  Yet resurrection is a sense of direction,

  resurrection is a bee-line,

  straight to the horde and plunder,

  the treasure, the store-room,

  the honeycomb;

  resurrection is remuneration,

  food, shelter, fragrance

  of myrrh and balm.

  [8]

  I am so happy,

  I am the first or the last

  of a flock or a swarm;

  I am full of new wine;

  I am branded with a word,

  I am burnt with wood,

  drawn from glowing ember,

  not cut, not marked with steel;

  I am the first or the last to renounce

  iron, steel, metal;

  I have gone forward,

  I have gone backward,

  I have gone onward from bronze and iron,

  into the Golden Age.

  [9]

  No poetic fantasy

  but a biological reality,

  a fact: I am an entity

  like bird, insect, plant

  or sea-plant cell;

  I live; I am alive;

  take care, do not know me,

  deny me, do not recognise me,

  shun me; for this reality

  is infectious—ecstasy.

  [10]

  It is no madness to say

  you will fall, you great cities,

  (now the cities lie broken);

  it is not tragedy, prophecy

  from a frozen Priestess,

  a lonely Pythoness

  who chants, who sings

  in broken hexameters,

  doom, doom to city-gates,

  to rulers, to kingdoms;

  it is simple reckoning, algebraic,

  it is geometry on the wing,

  not patterned, a gentian

  in an ice-mirror,

  yet it is, if you like, a lily

  folded like a pyramid,

  a flower-cone,

  not a heap of skulls;

  it is a lily, if you will,

  each petal, a kingdom, an aeon,

  and it is the seed of a lily

  that having flowered,

  will flower again;

  it is that smallest grain,

  the least of all seeds

  that grows branches

  where the birds rest;

  it is that flowering balm,

  it is heal-all,

  everlasting;

  it is the greatest among herbs

  and becometh a tree.

  [11]

  He was the first that flew

  (the heavenly pointer)

  but not content to leave

  the scattered flock,

  He journeys back and forth

  between the poles of heaven and earth forever;

  He was the first to wing

  from that sad Tree,

  but having flown, the Tree of Life

  bears rose from thorn

  and fragrant vine,

  from barren wood;

  He was the first to say,

  not to the chosen few,

  his faithful friends,

  the wise and good,

  but to an outcast and a vagabond,

  to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.

  [12]

  So the first—it is written,

  will be the twisted or the tortured individuals,

  out of line, out of step with world so-called progress;

  the first to receive the promise was a thief;

  the first actually to witness His life-after-death,

  was an unbalanced, neurotic woman,

  who was naturally reviled for having left home

  and not caring for house-work … or was that Mary of Bethany?

  in any case—as to this other Mary

  and what she did, everyone knows,

  but it is not on record

  exactly where and how she found the alabaster jar;

  some say she took the house-money

  or the poor-box money,

  some say she had nothing with her,

  neither purse nor script,

  no gold-piece or silver

  stamped with image o
f Caesar.

  [13]

  In any case, she struek an uneanny bargain

  (or so some say) with an Arab,

  a stranger in the market-place;

  actually, he had a little booth of a house

  set to the left, back of the market

  as you pass through the lower-gate;

  what he had, was not for sale; he was on his way

  to a eoronation and a funeral—a double affair—

  what he had, his priceless, unobtainable-elsewhere myrrh

  was for the double ceremony, a funeral and a throning;

  his was not ordinary myrrh and incense

  and anyway, it is not for sale, he said;

  he drew aside his robe in a noble manner

  but the un-maidenly woman did not take the hint;

  she had seen nobility herself at first hand;

  nothing impressed her, it was easy to see;

  she simply didn’t eare whether he acclaimed

  or snubbed her—or worse; what are insults?

  she knew how to detach herself,

  another unforgivable sin,

  and when stones were hurled,

  she simply wasn’t there;

  she wasn’t there and then she appeared,

  not a beautiful woman really—would you say?

  certainly not pretty;

  what struck the Arab was that she was unpredictable;

  this had never happened before—a woman—

  well yes—if anyone did, he knew the world—a lady

  had not taken a hint, had not sidled gracefully

  at a gesture of implied dismissal

  and with no apparent offence really,

  out of the door.

  [14]

  It was easy to see that he was not an ordinary merchant;

  she saw that certainly—he was an ambassador;

  there was hardly anyone you could trust

  with this precious merchandise,

  though the jars were sealed,

  the fragrance got out somehow,

  and the rumour was bruited about,

  even if you yourself managed to keep out

  of the ordinary haunts of the merchants;

  some said, this distillation, this attar

  lasted literally forever, had so lasted—

  though no one could of course, actually know

  what was or was-not in those alabaster boxes

  of the Princesses of the Hyksos Kings,

  there were unguent jars, certainly;

  but who would open them?

  they had charms wrought upon them,

  there were sigils and painted figures on all the jars;

  no one dismantled the tombs,

  that would be wickedness—but this he knew,

  his own people for centuries and centuries,

  had whispered the secret of the sacred processes of distillation;

  it was never written, not even in symbols, for this they knew—

  no secret was safe with a woman.

  [15]

  She said, I have heard of you;

  he bowed ironically and ironically murmured,

  I have not had the pleasure,

  his eyes now fixed on the half-open door;

  she understood; this was his second rebuff

  but deliberately, she shut the door;

  she stood with her back against it;

  planted there, she flung out her arms,

  a further barrier,

  and her scarf slipped to the floor;

  her face was very pale,

  her eyes darker and larger

  than many whose luminous depth

  had inspired some not-inconsiderable poets;

  but eyes? he had known many women—

  it was her hair—un-maidenly—

  It was hardly decent of her to stand there,

  unveiled, in the house of a stranger.

  [16]

  I am Mary, she said, of a tower-town,

  or once it must have been towered

  for Magdala is a tower;

  Magdala stands on the shore;

  I am Mary, she said, of Magdala,

  I am Mary, a great tower;

  through my will and my power,

  Mary shall be myrrh;

  I am Mary—O, there are Marys a-plenty,

  (though I am Mara, bitter) I shall be Mary-myrrh;

  I am that myrrh-tree of the gentiles,

  the heathen; there are idolaters,

  even in Phrygia and Cappadocia,

  who kneel before mutilated images

  and burn incense to the Mother of Mutilations,

  to Attis-Adonis-Tammuz and his mother who was myrrh;

  she was a stricken woman,

  having borne a son in unhallowed fashion;

  she wept bitterly till some heathen god

  changed her to a myrrh-tree;

  I am Mary, I will weep bitterly,

  bitterly … bitterly.

  [17]

  But her voice was steady and her eyes were dry,

  the room was small, hardly a room,

  it was an alcove or a wide cupboard

  with a closed door, a shaded window;

  there was hardly any light from the window

  but there seemed to be light somewhere,

  as of moon-light on a lost river

  or a sunken stream, seen in a dream

  by a parched, dying man, lost in the desert …

  or a mirage … it was her hair.

  [18]

  He who was unquestionably

  master of caravans,

  stooped to the floor;

  he handed her her scarf;

  it was unseemly that a woman

  appear disordered, dishevelled;

  it was unseemly that a woman

  appear at all.

  [19]

  I am Mary, the incense-flower of the incense-tree,

  myself worshipping, weeping, shall be changed to myrrh;

  I am Mary, though melted away,

  I shall be a tower … she said, Sir,

  I have need, not of bread nor of wine,

  nor of anything you can offer me,

  and demurely, she knotted her scarf

  and turned to unfasten the door.

  [20]

  Some say she slipped out and got away,

  some say he followed her and found her,

  some say he never found her

  but sent a messenger after her

  with the alabaster jar;

  some say he himself was a Magician,

  a Chaldean, not an Arab at all,

  and had seen the beginning and the end,

  that he was Balthasar, Melchior,

  or that other of Bethlehem;

  some say he was masquerading,

  was an Angel in disguise

  and had really arranged this meeting

  to conform to the predicted pattern

  which he or Balthasar or another

  had computed exactly from the stars;

  some say it never happened,

  some say it happens over and over;

  some say he was an old lover

  of Mary Magdalene and the gift of the myrrh

  was in recognition of an old burnt-out

  yet somehow suddenly renewed infatuation;

  some say he was Abraham,

  some say he was God.

  [21]

  Anyhow, it is exactly written,

  the house was filled with the odour of the ointment;

  that was a little later and this was not such a small house

  and was maybe already fragrant with boughs and wreaths,

  for this was a banquet, a festival;

  it was all very gay and there was laughter,

  but Judas Iscariot turned down his mouth,

  he muttered Extravagant under his breath,

  for the nard though not potent,

  had that subtle, indefinable essenc
e

  that lasts longer and costs more;

  Judas whispered to his neighbour

  and then they all began talking about the poor;

  but Mary, seated on the floor,

  like a child at a party, paid no attention;

  she was busy; she was deftly un-weaving

  the long, carefully-braided tresses

  of her extraordinary hair.

  [22]

  But Simon the host thought,

  we must draw the line somewhere;

  he had seen something like this

  in a heathen picture

  or a carved stone-portal entrance

  to a forbidden sea-temple;

  they called the creature,

  depicted like this,

  seated on the sea-shore

  or on a rock, a Siren,

  a maid-of-the-sea, a mermaid;

  some said, this mermaid sang

  and that a Siren-song was fatal

  and wrecks followed the wake of such hair;

  she was not invited,

  he bent to whisper

  into the ear of his Guest,

  I do not know her.

  [23]

  There was always a crowd hanging about outside

  any door his Guest happened to enter;

  he did not wish to make a scene,

  he would call someone quietly to eject her;

  Simon though over-wrought and excited,

  had kept careful count of his guests;

  things had gone excellently till now,

  but this was embarrassing;

  she was actually kissing His feet;

  He does not understand;

  they call him a Master,

  but Simon questioned:

  this man if he were a prophet, would have known

  who and what manner of woman this is.

  [24]

  Simon did not know but Balthasar

  or Melchior could have told him,

  or better still, Gaspar or Kaspar,

  who, they say, brought the myrrh;

  Simon wished to avoid a scene

  but Kaspar knew the scene was unavoidable

  and already written in a star

  or a configuration of stars

  that rarely happens, perhaps once

  in a little over two thousand years.