#AmericanWriters
Wash of cold river in a glacial land, Ionian water, chill, snow—ribbed sand, drift of rare flowers,
All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands.
Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea—fish. I cover you with my net. What are you —banded one?
White, O white face— from disenchanted days wither alike dark rose and fiery bays: no gift within our hands,
So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the l… above the earth, I who could have slept among the l… at last;
YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through
Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent
Bear me to Dictaeus, and to the steep slopes; to the river Erymanthus. I choose spray of dittany, cyperum, frail of flower,
NOR skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar—wood be over you, Nor the fir—tree
I have had enough. I gasp for breath. Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at last to the hill-crest—
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,
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
Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meagre flower, thin, sparse of leaf, more precious
Silver dust lifted from the earth, higher than my arms reach, you have mounted. O silver,
Whirl up, sea— whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us,