You quiver like a sea-fish.
I cover you with my net.
What are you – banded one?
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I have had enough.
Every way ends, every road,every foot-path leads at lastto the hill-crest —then you retrace your steps,or find the same slope on the other side,precipitate.I have had enough —border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,herbs, sweet-cress.O for some sharp swish of a branch —there is no scent of resinin this place,no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,aromatic, astringent —only border…
Helen herself seems almost ready for this sacrifice-at least, for the immolation of herself before this greatest love of Achilles, his dedication to ‘his own ship’ and the figurehead, ‘an idol or eidolon . . . a mermaid, Thetis upon the prow.’
was she Greek or Egyptian?had some Phoenician sailor wrought her?was she oak-wood or cedar?had she been cut from an awkward blockof ship-wood at the ship-builders,and afterwards riveted there,or had the prow itself been shapedto her mermaid body,curved to her mermaid hair?was there a dash of paintin the beginning, in the garment-fold,did the blue afterwards wear…
I
root tangled in sand,sea-iris, brittle flower,one petal like a shellis broken,and you print a shadowlike a thin twig.Fortunate one,scented and stinging,rigid myrrh-bud,camphor-flower,sweet and salt—you are windin our nostrils.IIDo the murex-fishersdrench you as they pass?Do your roots drag up colourfrom the sand?Have they slipped gold under you—rivets of gold?Band of iris-flowersabove the waves,you are painted blue,painted…
Bear me to Dictaeus,
to the river Erymanthus.I choose spray of dittany,cyperum, frail of flower,buds of myrrh,all-healing herbs,close pressed in calathes.For she lies panting,drawing sharp breath,broken with harsh sobs.she, Hyella,whom no god pities.
I should have thought
some lovely, perilous thing,orchids piled in a great sheath,as who would say (in a dream),‘I send you this,who left the blue veinsof your throat unkissed.’Why was it that your hands(that never took mine),your hands that I could seedrift over the orchid-headsso carefully,your hands, so fragile, sure to liftso gently, the fragile flower-stuff–ah, ah, how was…
Can we believe — by an effort
it is not waste all this,not placed here in disgust,street after street,each patterned alike,no grace to lightena single house of the hundredcrowded into one garden-space.Crowded — can we believe,not in utter disgust,in ironical play —but the maker of cities grew faintwith the beauty of templeand space before temple,arch upon perfect arch,of pillars and corridors that…