#AmericanWriters
The white violet is scented on its stalk, the sea—violet fragile as agate, lies fronting all the wind
Will you glimmer on the sea? Will you fling your spear—head On the shore? What note shall we pitch? We have a song,
You are clear O rose, cut in rock, hard as the descent of hail. I could scrape the colour from the petals
Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meagre flower, thin, sparse of leaf, more precious
Wash of cold river in a glacial land, Ionian water, chill, snow—ribbed sand, drift of rare flowers,
Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent
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;
I saw the first pear as it fell— the honey—seeking, golden—banded, the yellow swarm was not more fleet than I,
The mysteries remain, I keep the same cycle of seed—time and of sun and rain; Demeter in the grass,
The light passes from ridge to ridge, from flower to flower— the hepaticas, wide—spread under the light
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),
All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands.
Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone
Hymen, O Hymen king, what bitter thing is this? what shaft, tearing my heart? what scar, what light, what fire searing my eye—balls and my eyes w…
I have had enough. I gasp for breath. Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at last to the hill-crest—