#AmericanWriters
Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain, treasure
Can we believe—by an effort comfort our hearts: it is not waste all this, not placed here in disgust, street after street,
Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down
From citron—bower be her bed, cut from branch of tree a—flower, fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, cut the width of board and lathe,
YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through
Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea—fish. I cover you with my net. What are you —banded one?
I have had enough. I gasp for breath. Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at last to the hill-crest—
I first tasted under Apollo’s lip… love and love sweetness, I, Evadne; my hair is made of crisp violets or hyacinth which the wind combs b…
I should have thought in a dream you would have brought some lovely, perilous thing, orchids piled in a great sheath, as who would say (in a dream),
The white violet is scented on its stalk, the sea—violet fragile as agate, lies fronting all the wind
Bear me to Dictaeus, and to the steep slopes; to the river Erymanthus. I choose spray of dittany, cyperum, frail of flower,
Stars wheel in purple, yours is no… as Hesperus, nor yet so great a st… as bright Aldeboran or Sirius, nor yet the stained and brilliant… stars turn in purple, glorious to…
Wash of cold river in a glacial land, Ionian water, chill, snow—ribbed sand, drift of rare flowers,
Weed, moss—weed, root tangled in sand, sea—iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken,
O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop through this thick air—