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[Artemis speaks]
The cornel-trees
uplift from the furrows,
the roots at their bases
strike lower through the barley-sprays.
So arise and face me.
I am poisoned with the rage of song.
I once pierced the flesh
of the wild-deer,
now am I afraid to touch
the blue and the gold-veined hyacinths?
I will tear the full flowers
and the little heads
of the grape-hyacinths.
I will strip the life from the bulb
until the ivory layers
lie like narcissus petals
on the black earth.
Arise,
lest I bend an ash-tree
into a taut bow,
and slay—and tear
all the roots from the earth.
The cornel-wood blazes
and strikes through the barley-sprays,
but I have lost heart for this.
I break a staff.
I break the tough branch.
I know no light in the woods.
I have lost pace with the winds.
Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star as bright Aldeboran or Sirius, nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War; stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight; yours is not gracious as the Pleiads are nor as Orion's sapphires, luminous; yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face, when all the others blighted, reel and fall, your star, steel-set, keeps lone and frigid tryst to freighted ships, baffled in wind and blast.
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 flower-leaf," or "Lover to lover, no kiss, no touch, but forever and ever this."
Helen herself seems almost ready for this sacrifice--at least, for the immolation of herself before this greatest love of Achilles, his dedication to "his own ship" and the figurehead, "an idol or eidolon . . . a mermaid, Thetis upon the prow."
Did her eyes slant in the old way? was she Greek or Egyptian? had some Phoenician sailor wrought her? was she oak-wood or cedar? had she been cut from an awkward block of ship-wood at the ship-builders, and afterwards riveted there, or had the prow itself been shaped to her mermaid body, curved to her mermaid hair? was there a dash of paint in the beginning, in the garment-fold, did the blue afterwards wear away? did they re-touch her arms, her shoulders? did anyone touch her ever? Had she other zealot and lover, or did he alone worship her? did she wear a girdle of sea-weed or a painted crown? how often did her high breasts meet the spray, how often dive down?
What you make on Orion
I leave to you
What you take from Orion
I take to you
Far far away where the swans fly to when we
are having winter, lived a King who had eleven sons and one daughter
Hans Christian Andersen
in the greening time
there was once
there was a
because we didn’t
Turn on the light
There was trespass
We didn’t
Unadorned Side is his wife
Bellatrix are the shoulder stars
Drape the mantle of the remarkable nebula
Take first
cause
is effect
once mishap misshape
But let us not talk in the language of evidence
sleep deprivation vigilance the screen and the Styrofoam king
of airspace
renames the sky
documentary to which all words refer
escapes us near or newer air