Three Poems

H.D.

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  • HELIOS
  • PHAEDRA REMEMBERS CRETE
  • PHAEDRA REBUKES HIPPOLYTA

  • HELIOS





    Helios makes all things right —
    night brands and chokes,
    as if destruction broke
    over furze and stone and crop
    of myrtle-shoot and field-wort,
    destroyed with flakes of iron,
    the bracken-stems,
    where tender roots were, sown
    blight, chaff and waste
    of darkness to choke and drown.


    A curious god to find,
    yet in the end faithful;
    bitter, the Kyprian's feet —
    ah, flecks of whited clay,
    great hero, vaunted lord —
    ah, petals, dust and windfall
    on the ground — queen awaiting queen.


    Better the weight, they tell,
    the helmet's beaten shell,
    Athene's riven steel,
    caught over the white skull,
    Athene sets to heel
    the few who merit it.


    Yet even then, what help,
    should he not turn and note
    the height of forehead and the seal of conquest,
    drawn near, and try the helmet;
    to lift — reset the crown


    Athene weighted down,
    or break with a light touch
    mayhap the steel set to protect;
    to slay or heal.


    A treacherous god, they say,
    yet who would wait to test
    justice or worth or right,
    when through a fetid night
    is wafted faint and nearer —
    then straight, as point of steel
    to one who courts swift death,
    scent of Hesperidean orange-spray.


    PHAEDRA REMEMBERS CRETE





    Think, O my soul,
    of the red sand of Crete;
    think of the earth, the heat
    burnt fissure like the great backs of the temple serpents;
    think of the world you knew;
    as the tide crept, the land
    burned with a lizard-blue
    where the dark sea met the sand.


    Think, O my soul —
    what power has struck you blind —
    is there no desert root, no forest-berry,
    pine-pitch or knot of fir
    known that can help the soul
    caught in a force, a power,
    passionless, not its own?


    So I scatter, so implore
    Gods of Crete, summoned before
    with slighter craft;
    ah, hear my prayer:


    Grant to my soul
    the body that it wore,
    trained to your thought,
    that kept and held your power,
    as the petal of black power
    the opiate of the flower.


    For art undreamt in Crete,
    strange art and dire,
    in counter-charm prevents my charm,
    limits my power:
    pine-cones I heap
    grant answer to my prayer.


    No more, my soul —
    as the black cup, sullen and dark with fire,
    burns till beside it, noon's bright heat
    is withered, filled with dust,
    and into that noon-heat
    grown drab and stale,
    is sudden sound of thunder and swift rain,
    till the scarlet flower is wrecked
    in the slash of the white hail.


    The poppy that my soul was,
    formed to bind all mortals,
    made to strike and gather hearts
    like flame upon an altar,
    fades and shrinks, a red leaf —
    waste and drift of the cold rain.



    PHAEDRA REBUKES HIPPOLYTA





    Swift and a broken rock
    clatters across the steep shelf
    of the mountain-slope,
    sudden and swift,
    and breaks as it clatters down
    into the hollow breach
    of the dried water-course;
    far and away
    (through fire, I see it,
    and smoke of the dead, withered stalks
    of the wild cistus-brush)
    Hippolyta, frail and wild,
    galloping up the slope
    between great boulders
    and shelves and circles of rock.


    I see it, sharp, this vision,
    and each fleck on the horse's flanks
    of foam, the bridle and bit,
    the silver — the reins,
    held fast with perfect art,
    the sun, striking athwart
    the silver work,
    the neck, strained forward, ears alert,
    and the head of the girl
    flung back and her throat.
    Ah, burn my fire, I ask
    out of the smoke-ringed darkness
    enclosing the flaming disk
    of my vision —
    I ask for a voice — an answer —
    was she chaste?


    Who can say,
    the broken ridge of the hills
    was the line of a lover's shoulder,
    his arm-turn, the path to the hills,
    the sudden leap and swift thunder
    of mountain-boulders, his laugh.


    She was mad —
    as no priest, no lovers' cult
    could grant madness;
    the wine that entered her heart
    with the touch of the mountain-rocks
    was white, intoxicant:
    she, the lithe and remote,
    was betrayed by the glint
    of light on the hills,
    the granite splinters of rock,
    the touch of the stone
    where heat melts
    toward the shadow-side of the rocks.