I was angry with his mystery, his mysteries,
I argued till day-break;
O, it was late,
and God will forgive me, my anger,
but I could not accept it.
I could not accept from wisdom
what love taught,
woman is perfect.
V
She is a woman,
yet beyond woman,
yet in woman,
her feet are the delicate pulse of the narcissus bud,
pushing from earth
(ah, where is your man-strength?)
her arms are the waving of the young
male,
tentative,
reaching out
that first evening
alone in a forest;
she is woman,
her thighs are frail yet strong,
she leaps from rock to rock
(it was only a small circle for her dance)
and the hills dance,
she conjures the hills;
“rhododendrons
awake,”
her feet
pulse,
the rhododendrons
wake
there is purple flower
between her marble, her birch-tree white
thighs,
or there is a red flower,
there is a rose flower
parted wide,
as her limbs fling wide in dance
ecstatic
Aphrodite,
there is a frail lavender flower
hidden in grass;
O God, what is it,
this flower
that in itself had power over the whole earth?
for she needs no man,
herself
is that dart and pulse of the male,
hands, feet, thighs,
herself perfect.
VI
Let the old man lie in the earth
(he has troubled men’s thought long enough)
let the old man die,
let the old man be of the earth
he is earth,
Father,
O beloved
you are the earth,
he is the earth, Saturn, wisdom,
rock, (O his bones are hard, he is strong, that old man)
let him create a new earth,
and from the rocks of this re-birth
the whole world
must suffer,
only we
who are free,
may foretell,
may prophesy,
he,
(it is he the old man
who will bring a new world to birth)
it is he,
it is he
who already has formed a new earth.
VII
He will trouble the thoughts of men
yet for many an aeon,
they will travel far and wide,
they will discuss all his written words,
his pen will be sacred
they will build a temple
and keep all his sacred writings safe,
and men will come
and men will quarrel
but he will be safe;
they will found temples in his name,
his fame
will be so great
that anyone who has known him
will also be hailed as master,
seer,
interpreter;
only I,
I will escape.
VIII
And it was he himself, he who set me free
to prophesy,
he did not say
“stay,
my disciple,”
he did not say,
“write,
each word I say is sacred,”
he did not say, “teach”
he did not say,
“heal
or seal
documents in my name,”
no,
he was rather casual,
“we won’t argue about that”
(he said)
“you are a poet.”
IX
So I went forth
blinded a little with the sort of terrible tears
that won’t fall;
I said good-bye
and saw his old head
as he turned,
as he left the room
leaving me alone
with all his old trophies,
the marbles, the vases, the stone Sphynx,
the old, old jars from Egypt;
he left me alone with these things
and his old back was bowed;
O God,
those tears didn’t come,
how could they?
I went away,
I said,
“I won’t have this tyranny
of an old man
he is too old,
I will die,
if I love him;
I can not love him
he is too near
too precious to God.”
X
But one does not forget him
who makes all things feasible,
one does not forgive him
who makes God-in-all
possible,
for that is unbearable.
XI
Now can I bear even God,
for a woman’s laughter
prophesies
happiness:
(not man, not men,
only one, the old man,
sacred to God);
no man will be present in those mysteries,
yet all men will kneel,
no man will be potent,
important,
yet all men will feel
what it is to be a woman,
will yearn,
burn,
turn from easy pleasure
to hardship
of the spirit,
men will see how long they have been blind,
poor men
poor man-kind
how long
how long
this thought of the man-pulse has tricked them,
has weakened them,
shall see woman,
perfect.
XII
And they did;
I was not the only one that cried
madly,
madly,
we were together,
we were one;
we were together,
we were one;
sun-worshippers,
we flung
as one voice
our cry
Rhodocleia;
Rhodocleia,
near to the sun,
we did not say
“pity us,”
we did not say, “look at us,”
we cried,
“O heart of the sun
rhododendron,
Rhodocleia,
we are unworthy your beauty,
you are near beauty the sun,
you are that Lord become woman.”
The Poet
I
There were sea-horses and mer-men
and a flat tide-shelf,
there was a sand-dune,
turned moon-ward,
and a trail of wet weed
beyond it,
another of weed,
burnt another colour,
and scattered seed-pods
from the sea-weed;
there was a singing snail,
(does a snail sing?)
a sort of tenuous wail
that was not the wind
nor that one gull,
perched on the half-buried
keel,
nor was it any part of translatable sound,
it might have been, of course,
another sort of reed-bird,
further inland;
inland, there was a pond,
filled with water-lilies;
&
nbsp; they opened in fresh-water
but the sea was so near,
one was afraid some inland tide,
some sudden squall,
would sweep up,
sweep in,
over the fresh-water pond,
down the lilies;
that is why I am afraid;
I look at you,
I think of your song,
I see the long trail of your coming,
(your nerves are almost gone)
your song is the wail
of something intangible
that I almost
but not-quite feel.
II
But you are my brother,
it is an odd thing that we meet here;
there is this year
and that year,
my lover,
your lover,
there is death
and the dead past:
but you were not living at all,
and I was half-living,
so where the years blight these others,
we, who were not of the years,
have escaped,
we got nowhere;
they were all going somewhere;
I know you now at this moment, when you turn
and thank me ironically,
(everything you say is ironical)
for the flagon I offer,
(you will have no more white wine);
you are over-temperate in all things;
(is inspiration to be tempered?)
almost, as you pause,
in reply to some extravagance
on my part,
I believe that I have failed,
because I got out of the husk that was my husk,
and was butterfly;
O snail,
I know that you are singing;
your husk is a skull,
your song is an echo,
your song is infinite as the sea,
your song is nothing,
your song is the high-tide that washed away the old
boat-keel,
the wet weed,
the dry weed,
the seed-pods scattered,
but not you;
you are true
to your self, being true
to the irony
of your shell.
III
Yes,
it is dangerous to get out,
and you shall not fail;
but it is also
dangerous to stay in,
unless one is a snail:
a butterfly has antennae,
is moral
and ironical too.
IV
And your shell is a temple,
I see it at night-fall;
your small coptic temple
is left inland,
in spite of wind,
not yet buried
in sand-storm;
your shell is a temple,
its windows are amber;
you smile
and a candle is set somewhere
on an altar;
everyone has heard of the small coptic temple,
but who knows you,
who dwell there?
V
No,
I don’t pretend, in a way, to understand,
nor know you,
nor even see you;
I say,
“I don’t grasp his philosophy,
and I don’t understand,”
but I put out a hand, touch a cold door,
(we have both come from so far);
I touch something imperishable;
I think,
why should he stay there?
why should he guard a shrine so alone,
so apart,
on a path that leads nowhere?
he is keeping a candle burning in a shrine
where nobody comes,
there must be some mystery
in the air
about him,
he couldn’t live alone in the desert,
without vision to comfort him,
there must be voices somewhere.
VI
I am almost afraid to sit on this stone,
a little apart,
(hoping you won’t know I am here)
I am almost afraid to look up at the windows,
to watch for that still flame;
I am almost afraid to speak,
certainly won’t cry out, “hail,”
or “farewell” or the things people do shout:
I am almost afraid to think to myself,
why,
he is there.
A Dead Priestess Speaks
I
I was not pure,
nor brought
purity to cope
with the world’s lost hope,
nor was I insolent;
I went my own way,
quiet and still by day,
advised my neighbour
on the little crop
that faded in the sudden heat,
or brought my seedlings
where hers fell too late
to catch the first
still summer-dew
or late rain-fall of autumn;
I never shone
with glory
among women,
and with men,
I stood apart,
smiling;
they thought me good;
far, far, far
in the wild-wood,
they would have found me other
had they found
me, whom no man yet found,
only the forest-god
of the wet moss,
of the deep underground,
or of the dry rock
parching to the moon:
at noon,
I folded hands; when my hands
lifted up
a moment from the distaff,
I spoke of luck
that got our Arton’s son dictatorship
in a far city;
when I left my room,
it was to tilt a water-jar or fill
a wine-jar with fresh vintage,
not too ripe;
I gave encouragement
and sought,
do you like this pattern
of the helm
of Jason’s boat (a new one)
with the olive?
I smiled,
I waited,
I was circumspect;
O never, never, never write that I
missed life or loving;
when the loom
of the three spinning Sisters stops,
and she,
the middle spinner, pauses,
while the last
one with the shears,
cuts off the living thread,
then They may read
the pattern
though you may not,
I, being dead.
II
I laughed not overmuch,
nor sang nor cried;
they said, I might have had,
one year,
the prize, the archon offered
for an epitaph
to a dead soldier;
when I left my room
and saw the sunlight
long upon the grass
and knew that day was over,
the night near,
I scratched the tablet-wax
with a small broom
I made of myrtle from the stunted bush
that grows beside our harbour,
for I looked over the sea-wall
to the further sea —
dark, dark and purple;
no one could write, after his wine-dark sea,
an epitaph of glory and of spears;
I watched the years go on
like sun on grass,
and shadow across sunlight,
till they said,
O—you remember? trumpets,
>
the fire, the shout, the glory of the war?
I answered circumspectly,
claiming no
virtue
that helped the wounded
and no fire
that sung of battle ended,
then they said,
ah she is modest, she is purposeful,
and nominated for the Herald’s place,
one
Delia of Miletus.
III
I walked sedately at the head of things,
who yet had wings they saw not;
had they seen,
they would have counted me as one of those
old women who were young when I was young,
who wore bright saffron vestments;
I wore white,
as fitting the high-priestess;
ah, at night
I had my secret thought, my secret way,
I had my secret song,
who sang by day,
the holy metres that the matrons sang,
sung only by those dedicate to life
of civic virtue
and of civic good;
I knew the poor,
I knew the hideous death they die,
when famine lays its bleak hand on the door;
I knew the rich,
sated with merriment,
who yet are sad,
and I was ever glad,
and circumspect
who never knew their life,
nor poor nor rich,
nor entered into strife,
when the new archon spoke of a new war.
IV
Ah, there was fire —
it caught the light
from the wild-olive when it ceased to yield
a proper fruit,
being wild and small and dear
to me at least,
who bit the acrid berries;
I could have eaten ash-leaves
or wild-oak,
I could have grubbed for acorns like a boar,
or like a wild-goat
bitten into bark,
I could have pecked the bay-tree
like a bird,
winter-green berry
or the berried branch
of the wild oleander;
tasting leaf and root,
I thought at times of poison,
hoped that I
might lie deep in the tangle,
tasting the hemlock
blossom,
and so die;
but I came home,
and the last archon saw
me reach the door, at dawn;
I did not even care what he might say;
he might have said,
Delia of Miletus is a whore,
she wanders in the open street at night;
how is it
I, who do not care, who did not,
was to him as a mother or a bride,
Selected Poems of Hilda Doolittle Page 9