yet the frame held:
we passed the flame: we wonder
what saved us? what for?
[2]
Evil was active in the land,
Good was impoverished and sad;
Ill promised adventure,
Good was smug and fat;
Dev-ill was after us,
tricked up like Jehovah;
Good was the tasteless pod,
stripped from the manna-beans, pulse, lentils:
they were angry when we were so hungry
for the nourishment, God;
they snatched off our amulets,
charms are not, they said, grace;
but gods always face two-ways,
so let us search the old highways
for the true-rune, the right-spell,
recover old values;
nor listen if they shout out,
your beauty, Isis, Aset or Astarte,
is a harlot; you are retrogressive,
zealot, hankering after old flesh-pots;
your heart, moreover,
is a dead canker,
they continue, and
your rhythm is the devil’s hymn,
your stylus is dipped in corrosive sublimate,
how can you scratch out
indelible ink of the palimpsest
of past misadventure?
[3]
Let us, however, recover the Sceptre,
the rod of power:
it is crowned with the lily-head
or the lily-bud:
it is Caduceus; among the dying
it bears healing:
or evoking the dead,
it brings life to the living.
[4]
There is a spell, for instance,
in every sea-shell:
continuous, the sea-thrust
is powerless against coral,
bone, stone, marble
hewn from within by that craftsman,
the shell-fish:
oyster, clam, mollusc
is master-mason planning
the stone marvel:
yet that flabby, amorphous hermit
within, like the planet
senses the finite,
it limits its orbit
of being, its house,
temple, fane, shrine:
it unlocks the portals
at stated intervals:
prompted by hunger,
it opens to the tide-flow:
but infinity? no,
of nothing-too-much:
I sense my own limit,
my shell-jaws snap shut
at invasion of the limitless,
ocean-weight; infinite water
can not crack me, egg in egg-shell;
closed in, complete, immortal
full-circle, I know the pull
of the tide, the lull
as well as the moon;
the octopus-darkness
is powerless against
her cold immortality;
so I in my own way know
that the whale
can not digest me:
be firm in your own small, static, limited
orbit and the shark-jaws
of outer circumstance
will spit you forth:
be indigestible, hard, ungiving.
so that, living within,
you beget, self-out-of-self,
selfless,
that pearl-of-great-price.
[6]
In me (the worm) clearly
is no righteousness, but this —
persistence; I escaped spider-snare,
bird-claw, scavenger bird-beak,
clung to grass-blade,
the back of a leaf
when storm-wind
tore it from its stem;
I escaped, I explored
rose-thorn forest,
was rain-swept
down the valley of a leaf;
was deposited on grass,
where mast by jewelled mast
bore separate ravellings
of encrusted gem-stuff
of the mist
from each banner-staff:
unintimidated by multiplicity
of magnified beauty,
such as your gorgon-great
dull eye can not focus
nor compass, I profit
by every calamity;
I eat my way out of it;
gorged on vine-leaf and mulberry,
parasite, I find nourishment:
when you cry in disgust,
a worm on the leaf,
a worm in the dust,
a worm on the ear-of-wheat,
I am yet unrepentant,
for I know how the Lord God
is about to manifest, when I,
the industrious worm,
spin my own shroud.
[7]
Gods, goddesses
wear the winged head-dress
of horns, as the butterfly
antennae,
or the erect king-cobra crest
to show how the worm turns.
[8]
So we reveal our status
with twin-horns, disk, erect serpent,
though these or the double-plume or lotus
are, you now tell us, trivial
intellectual adornment;
poets are useless,
more than that
we, authentic relic,
bearers of the secret wisdom,
living remnant
of the inner band
of the sanctuaries’ initiate,
are not only ‘non-utilitarian’,
we are ‘pathetic’:
this is the new heresy;
but if you do not even understand what words say,
how can you expect to pass judgement
on what words conceal?
yet the ancient rubrics reveal that
we are back at the beginning:
you have a long way to go,
walk carefully, speak politely
to those who have done their worm-cycle,
for gods have been smashed before
and idols and their secret is stored
in man’s very speech,
in the trivial or
the real dream; insignia
in the heron’s crest,
the asp’s back,
enigmas, rubrics promise as before,
protection for the scribe;
he takes precedence of the priest,
stands second only to the Pharaoh.
[9]
Thoth, Hermes, the stylus,
the palette, the pen, the quill endure,
though our books are a floor
of smouldering ash under our feet;
though the burning of the books remains
the most perverse gesture
and the meanest
of man’s mean nature,
yet give us, they still cry,
give us books,
folio, manuscript, old parchment
will do for cartridge cases;
irony is bitter truth
wrapped up in a little joke,
and Hatshepsut’s name is still circled
with what they call the cartouche.
[10]
But we fight for life,
we fight, they say, for breath,
so what good are your scribblings?
this—we take them with us
beyond death; Mercury, Hermes, Thoth
invented the script, letters, palette;
the indicated flute or lyre-notes
on papyrus or parchment
are magic, indelibly stamped
on the atmosphere somewhere,
forever; remember, O Sword,
you are the younger brother, the latter-born,
your Triumph, however exultant,
must one day be over,
in the beginning
; was the Word.
[16]
Ra, Osiris, Amen appeared
in a spacious, bare meeting-house;
he is the world-father,
father of past aeons,
present and future equally;
beardless, not at all like Jehovah,
he was upright, slender,
impressive at the Memnon monolith,
yet he was not out of place
but perfectly at home
in that eighteenth-century
simplicity and grace;
then I woke with a start
of wonder and asked myself,
but whose eyes are those eyes?
for the eyes (in the cold,
I marvel to remember)
were all one texture,
as if without pupil
or all pupil, dark
yet very clear with amber
shining…
[21]
Splintered the crystal of identity,
shattered the vessel of integrity,
till the Lord Amen,
paw-er of the ground,
bearer of the curled horns,
bellows from the horizon:
here am I, Amen-Ra,
Amen, Aries, the Ram;
time, time for you to begin a new spiral,
see — I toss you into the star-whirlpool;
till pitying, pitying,
snuffing the ground,
here am I, Amen-Ra whispers,
Amen, Aries, the Ram,
be cocoon, smothered in wool,
be Lamb, mothered again.
[22]
Now my right hand,
now my left hand
clutch your curled fleece;
take me home, take me home,
my voice wails from the ground;
take me home, Father:
pale as the worm in the grass,
yet I am a spark
struck by your hoof from a rock:
Amen, you are so warm,
hide me in your fleece,
crop me up with the new-grass;
let your teeth devour me,
let me be warm in your belly,
the sun-disk,
the re-born Sun.
[23]
Take me home
where canals
flow
between iris-banks:
where the heron
has her nest:
where the mantis
prays on the river-reed:
where the grasshopper says
Amen, Amen, Amen.
[39]
We have had too much consecration,
too little affirmation,
too much: but this, this, this
has been proved heretical,
too little: I know, I feel
the meaning that words hide;
they are anagrams, cryptograms,
little boxes, conditioned
to hatch butterflies…
[40]
For example:
Osiris equates O-sir-is or O-Sire-is;
Osiris,
the star Sirius,
relates resurrection myth
and resurrection reality
through the ages;
plasterer, crude mason,
not too well equipped, my thought
would cover deplorable gaps
in time, reveal the regrettable chasm,
bridge that before-and-after schism,
(before Abraham was I am)
uncover cankerous growths
in present-day philosophy,
in an endeavour to make ready,
as it were, the patient for the Healer;
correlate faith with faith,
recover the secret of Isis,
which is: there was One
in the beginning, Creator,
Fosterer, Begetter, the Same-forever
in the papyrus-swamp
in the Judean meadow.
[43]
Still the walls do not fall,
I do not know why;
there is zrr-hiss,
lightning in a not-known,
unregistered dimension;
we are powerless,
dust and powder fill our lungs
our bodies blunder
through doors twisted on hinges,
and the lintels slant
cross-wise;
we walk continually
on thin air
that thickens to a blind fog,
then step swiftly aside,
for even the air
is independable,
thick where it should be fine
and tenuous
where wings separate and open,
and the ether
is heavier than the floor,
and the floor sags
like a ship floundering;
we know no rule
of procedure,
we are voyagers, discoverers
of the not-known,
the unrecorded;
we have no map;
possibly we will reach haven,
heaven.
From Tribute to the Angels
To Osbert Sitwell
… possibly we will reach haven heaven.
[I]
Hermes Trismegistus
is patron of alchemists;
his province is thought,
inventive, artful and curious;
his metal is quicksilver,
his clients, orators, thieves and poets;
steal then, O orator,
plunder, O poet,
take what the old-church
found in Mithra’s tomb,
candle and script and bell,
take what the new-church spat upon
and broke and shattered;
collect the fragments of the splintered glass
and of your fire and breath,
melt down and integrate,
re-invoke, re-create
opal, onyx, obsidian,
now scattered in the shards
men tread upon.
[2]
Your walls do not fall, he said,
because your walls are made ofjasper;
but not four-square, I thought,
another shape (octahedron?)
slipped into the place
reserved by rule and rite
for the twelve foundations,
for the transparent glass,
for no need of the sun
nor moon to shine;
for the vision as we see
or have seen or imagined it
or in the past invoked
or conjured up or had conjured
by another, was usurped;
I saw the shape
which might have been of jasper,
but it was not four-square.
[3]
I John saw. I testify;
if any man shall add
God shall add unto him the plagues,
but he that sat upon the throne said,
I make all things new.
I John saw. I testify,
but I make all things new,
said He of the seven stars,
he of the seventy-times-seven
passionate, bitter wrongs,
He of the seventy-times-seven
bitter, unending wars.
[4]
Not in our time, O Lord,
the plowshare for the sword,
not in our time, the knife,
sated with life-blood and life,
to trim the barren vine;
no grape-leaf for the thorn,
no vine-flower for the crown;
not in our time, O King,
the voice to quell the re-gathering,
thundering storm.
[6]
Never in Rome,
so many martyrs fell;
not in Jerusalem,
never in Thebes,
so many stood and watched
<
br /> chariot-wheels turning,
saw with their very eyes,
the battle of the Titans,
saw Zeus’ thunderbolts in action
and how from giant hands,
the lightning shattered earth
and splintered sky, nor fled
to hide in caves,
but with unbroken will,
with unbowed head, watched
and though unaware, worshipped
and knew not that they worshipped
and that they were
that which they worshipped,
had they known the fire
of strength, endurance, anger
in their hearts,
was part of that same fire
that in a candle on a candle-stick
or in a star,
is known as one of seven,
is named among the seven Angels,
Uriel.
[7]
To Uriel, no shrine, no temple
where the red-death fell,
no image by the city-gate,
no torch to shine across the water,
no new fane in the market-place:
the lane is empty but the levelled wall
is purple as with purple spread
upon an altar,
this is the flowering of the rood,
this is the flowering of the reed,
where, Uriel, we pause to give
thanks that we rise again from death and live.
[8]
Now polish the crucible
and in the bowl distill
a word most bitter, marah,
a word bitterer still, mar,
sea, brine, breaker, seducer,
giver of life, giver of tears;
now polish the crucible
and set the jet of flame
Selected Poems of Hilda Doolittle Page 11
