#Americans #Imagist #Women #FreeVerse
O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop through this thick air—
Crash on crash of the sea, straining to wreck men; sea—boards… raging against the world, furious, stay at last, for against your fur… and your mad fight,
Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down
From citron—bower be her bed, cut from branch of tree a—flower, fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, cut the width of board and lathe,
Hymen, O Hymen king, what bitter thing is this? what shaft, tearing my heart? what scar, what light, what fire searing my eye—balls and my eyes w…
You are clear O rose, cut in rock, hard as the descent of hail. I could scrape the colour from the petals
Whirl up, sea— whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us,
Stars wheel in purple, yours is no… as Hesperus, nor yet so great a st… as bright Aldeboran or Sirius, nor yet the stained and brilliant… stars turn in purple, glorious to…
Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea—fish. I cover you with my net. What are you —banded one?
Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone
YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through
Wash of cold river in a glacial land, Ionian water, chill, snow—ribbed sand, drift of rare flowers,
Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent
NOR skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar—wood be over you, Nor the fir—tree
So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the l… above the earth, I who could have slept among the l… at last;