Are you alive?

meagre flower, thin,sparse of leaf,more preciousthan a wet rosesingle on a stem —you are caught in the drift.Stunted, with small leaf,you are flung on the sand,you are liftedin the crisp sandthat drives in the wind.Can the spice-rosedrip such acrid fragrancehardened in a leaf?

I, Evadne;my hair is made of crisp violetsor hyacinth which the wind combs backacross some rock shelf;I, Evadne,was made of the god of light.His hair was crisp to my mouth,as the flower of the crocus,across my cheek,cool as the silver-cresson Erotos bank;between my chin and throat,his mouth slipped over and over.Still between my arm and…

rend it to tatters.Fruit cannot dropthrough this thick air–fruit cannot fall into heatthat presses up and bluntsthe points of pearsand rounds the grapes.Cut the heat–plough through it,turning it on either sideof your path.

On the shore?What note shall we pitch?We have a song,On the bank we share our arrows—The loosed string tells our note:O flight,Bring her swiftly to our song.She is great,We measure her by the pine-trees.

cycle of seed-timeand of sun and rain;Demeter in the grass,I multiply,renew and blessBacchus in the vine;I hold the law,I keep the mysteries true,the first of theseto name the living, dead;I am the wine and bread.I keep the law,I hold the mysteries true,I am the vine,the branches, youand you.

We fled inland with our flocks.we pastured them in hollows,cut off from the windand the salt track of the marsh.We worshipped inland—we stepped past wood-flowers,we forgot your tang,we brushed wood-grass.We wandered from pine-hillsthrough oak and scrub-oak tangles,we broke hyssop and bramble,we caught flower and new bramble-fruitin our hair: we laughedas each branch whipped back,we tore…