Poetry, April 16

[jade_sabre]

FINALLY the day is nice enough and it's breaking...well, it's 69 now, and should be 74 afore the end of the afternoon.  And so, I present to you this poem, which I discovered while hunting around H.D.'s poetry.  H.D. was my first lesbian Imagist, and I just love love love the precision in her poetry.  It's not just the fact that the words she chooses evoke such amazing images, it's that she tends to pick words whose very spelling and sound add to the picture she's creating.  I adore her, and so I offer you this gem:



At Baia
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
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 veins
of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands
  (that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of a flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."