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H.D.

 
"H.D."
(Hilda Doolittle)
1886-1961

"Sheltered Garden"
(1916)

I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.

Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest –
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.

I have had enough –
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.

O for some sharp swish of a branch –
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent –
only border on border of scented pinks.

Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light –
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?

Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit –
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
With a russet coat.

Or the melon –
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste –
it is better to taste of frost –
the exquisite frost –
than of wadding and of dead grass.

For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves –
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince –
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.

O to blot out this garden –
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place.

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