Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE GIFT, by HILDA DOOLITTLE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE GIFT, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Instead of pearls - a wrought clasp
Last Line: No bracelet -- accept this.
Alternate Author Name(s): H. D.; Aldington, Richard, Mrs.
Subject(s): Bible; Gifts & Giving


INSTEAD of pearls -- a wrought clasp --
a bracelet -- will you accept this?
You know the script --
you will start, wonder:
what is left, what phrase
after last night? This:
The world is yet unspoiled for you,
you wait, expectant --
you are like the children
who haunt your own steps
for chance bits -- a comb
that may have slipped,
a gold tassle, unravelled,
plucked from your scarf,
twirled by your slight fingers
into the street --
a flower dropped.
Do not think me unaware,
I who have snatched at you
as the street-child clutched
at the seed-pearls you spilt
that hot day
when your necklace snapped.
Do not dream that I speak
as one defrauded of delight,
sick, shaken by each heart-beat
or paralyzed, stretched at length,
who gasps:
these ripe pears
are bitter to the taste,
this spiced wine, poison, corrupt.
I cannot walk --
who would walk?
Life is a scavanger's pit -- I escape --
I only, rejecting it,
lying here on this couch.
Your garden sloped to the beach,
myrtle overran the paths,
honey and amber flecked each leaf,
the citron-lily head --
one among many --
weighed there, over-sweet.
The myrrh-hyacinth
spread across low slopes,
violets streaked black ridges
through the grass.
The house, too, was like this,
over painted, over lovely --
the world is like this.
Sleepless nights,
I remember the initiates,
their gesture, their calm glance.
I have heard how in rapt thought,
in vision, they speak
with another race,
more beautiful, more intense than this.
I could laugh --
more beautiful, more intense?
Perhaps that other life
is contrast always to this.
I reason:
I have lived as they
in their inmost rites --
they endure the tense nerves
through the moment of ritual.
I endure from moment to moment --
days pass all alike,
tortured, intense.
This I forgot last night:
you must not be blamed,
it is not your fault;
as a child, a flower -- any flower
tore my breast --
meadow-chickory, a common grass-tip,
a leaf shadow, a flower tint
unexpected on a winter-branch.
I reason:
another life holds what this lacks,
a sea, unmoving, quiet --
not forcing our strength
to rise to it, beat on beat --
a stretch of sand,
no garden beyond, strangling
with its myrrh-lilies --
a hill, not set with black violets
but stones, stones, bare rocks,
dwarf-trees, twisted, no beauty
to distract -- to crowd
madness upon madness.
Only a still place
and perhaps some outer horror
some hideousness to stamp beauty,
a mark -- no changing it now --
on our hearts.
I send no string of pearls,
no bracelet -- accept this.





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