The Gift

Instead of pearls—a wrought clasp—

a bracelet—will you accept this?

You know the script—

you will start, wonder:

5

what is left, what phrase

after last night? This:

The world is yet unspoiled for you,

you wait, expectant—

you are like the children

10

who haunt your own steps

for chance bits—a comb

that may have slipped,

a gold tassel, unravelled,

plucked from your scarf,

15

twirled by your slight fingers

into the street—

a flower dropped.

Do not think me unaware,

I who have snatched at you

20

as the street-child clutched

at the seed-pearls you spilt

that hot day

when your necklace snapped.

Do not dream that I speak

25

as one defrauded of delight,

sick, shaken by each heart-beat

or paralyzed, stretched at length,

who gasps:

these ripe pears

30

are bitter to the taste,

this spiced wine, poison, corrupt.

I cannot walk—

who would walk?

Life is a scavenger's pit—I escape—

35

I only, rejecting it,

lying here on this couch.

Your garden sloped to the beach,

myrtle overran the paths,

honey and amber flecked each leaf,

40

the citron-lily head—

one among many—

weighed there, over-sweet.

The myrrh-hyacinth

spread across low slopes,

45

violets streaked black ridges

through the grass.

The house, too, was like this,

over painted, over lovely—

the world is like this.

50

Sleepless nights,

I remember the initiates,

their gesture, their calm glance.

I have heard how in rapt thought,

in vision, they speak

55

with another race,

more beautiful, more intense than this.

I could laugh—

more beautiful, more intense?

Perhaps that other life

60

is contrast always to this.

I reason:

I have lived as they

in their inmost rites—

they endure the tense nerves

65

through the moment of ritual.

I endure from moment to moment—

days pass all alike,

tortured, intense.

This I forgot last night:

70

you must not be blamed,

it is not your fault;

as a child, a flower—any flower

tore my breast—

meadow-chicory, a common grass-tip,

75

a leaf shadow, a flower tint

unexpected on a winter-branch.

I reason:

another life holds what this lacks,

a sea, unmoving, quiet—

80

not forcing our strength

to rise to it, beat on beat—

stretch of sand,

no garden beyond, strangling

with its myrrh-lilies—

85

a hill, not set with black violets

but stones, stones, bare rocks,

dwarf-trees, twisted, no beauty

to distract—to crowd

madness upon madness.

90

Only a still place

and perhaps some outer horror

some hideousness to stamp beauty,

a mark—no changing it now—

on our hearts.

95

I send no string of pearls,

no bracelet—accept this.

—
H. D.

Sea Garden, 1916