 C. Rose by Hilda Doolittle Red for LibriVox.org by Lurie Wilson Rose, harsh rose, marred in with stint of petals, meager flower, thin, sparse of leaf, more precious than a wet rose, single on a stem. You are caught in the drift, stunted with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, you are lifted in the crispest sand that drives in the wind. When the spiced rose drips such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf, end of poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Helmsman by Hilda Doolittle Red for LibriVox.org by Nima The Helmsman O. B. Swift, we have always known you wanted us. We fled inland with our flocks. We pastured them in hollows, cut off from the wind and the salt track of the marsh. We worshipped inland. We stepped past woodflowers. We forgot your tang. We brushed woodgrass. We wandered from pine hills through oak and scrub oak tangles. We broke hyssop and bramble. We caught flower, a new bramble fruit in our hair. We laughed as each branch whipped back. We tore our feet in half-buried rocks and knotted roots and acorn cups. We forgot. We worshipped. We parted green from green. We sought further thickets. We dipped our ankles through leaf mold in earth and wood and wood bank enchanted us. In the field of the clefts and the bark and the slope between tree and tree and a slender path strung field to field in wood to wood and hill to hill and the forest after it. We forgot for a moment tree resin, tree bark, sweat of a torn branch, were sweet to the taste. We were enchanted with the fields, the tufts of coarse grass and the shorter grass. We loved all this. But now our boat climbs, hesitates, drops, climbs, hesitates, crawls back, climbs, hesitates. Oh, be swift, we have always known you wanted us. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Shrine by Hilda Doodittle, read for Libber Vox by Chad Horner from Ballet Claire in Coutientum Northern Ireland, the 30th of May 2019. The Shrine she watches over the sea. Are your rocks sheltered for ships? Have you set galleys from your beach? Are you great at a safe crescent? Where the tide lifts them back to port? Are you full and sweet, tempting the quiet to depart in their trading ships? Nay, you are great, fierce, evil, you are the land-light, you have tempted men, but they perish on your cliffs. Your lights are but dank shoals, slate and pebble and wet shells, and seaweed fastened to the rocks. It was evil, evil, when they found you. When the quiet men looked at you, they sought a headland, shade it with ledge of cliff, from the wind blast. But you, you are unsheltered, cut with the weight of wind. You shudder when it strikes, then lift, swelled with the blast. You sink as the tide sinks, you shrill under hail, and sound thunder when thunder sounds. You are useless when the tides swirl, your boulders cut and wreck the staggering ships. You are useless, O grave, O beautiful, the landsmen tell it, I have heard it. You are useless, and the wind sounds with this, and the sea, where rollers shit with blue, cut under deeper blue. O, but stay tender, enchanted, where wavelengths cut you apart from all the rest. For we have found you, we watch the splendour of you, we thread, throught on throught, of fesia, from your shelf, you are not forgot, O plunder of lilies, honey is not more sweet than the salt stretch of your beach. Stay, stay, but terror has caught us now, we pass the men in ships, we dare deeper than the fisherfolk, and you strike us with terror, O bright shaft. Flame passes under us, and sparks that are not the flesh, sorrow splitting bone from bone, splendour, a thwart our eyes, and rifts in the splendour, sparks and scattered light. Many warned of this, men said, there are wrecks on the fore beach. Wind will beat your ship, there is no shelter in that headland, it is useless waste. That edge, that front of rock, seagulls clang beyond the breakers, none venture to that spot, but hail, as the tide slackens, as the wind beats out, we hail this shore, we sing to you, spear between the headlands, and the further rocks, though oak beam split, though boats and seaman flounder, and the straight grind sand with sand, and cup boulders to sand and drift, your eyes have pardoned your faults, your hands have touched us, you have leaned forward a little, and the waves can never thrust us back from the splendour of your ragged coast. In the poem, this recording is in the public domain. Midday by Hilda, do little, red for LibriVox, by Chad Horner, from Ballyclair in County Antwon, Northern Ireland, the seventeenth of June 2019. Midday, the light beats upon me, I am startled, a split leaf crackles on the paved floor, I am anguished defeated, a slight wind shakes the seed pods, my thoughts are spent as the black seeds, my thoughts tear me, I dread their fever, I am scattered in its whirl, I am scattered like the hot shriveled seeds, the shriveled seeds are split on the path, the grass bends with dust, the grape slips under its cracked leaf, yet far beyond the spent seed pods and the blackened stalks of mint, the poplar is bright on the hill, the poplar spreads out deep riddet among trees. O poplar, you are great among hillstones, while I perish on the path among the crevices of the rocks. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Pursuit, by Hilda Doolittle, readforlibbervox.org, by Chad Horner from Ballyclair in County Antwon, Northern Ireland, the seventeenth of June 2019. Pursuit, what do I care, that the stream is trumbled, the sand on the stream bank still holds the print of your foot, the hail is cut deep, I see another mark on the grass-redge of the bank, it points toward the woodpath, I have lost the third in the packed earth, but here, a wind's highest inth, stalk is snapped, the purple buds half ripe, show deep purple where your hill pressed, a patch of flowering grass, low, trailing, you brushed this, the green stems show yellow green where you lifted, turned the earth side to the light, this and a dead leaf spine split across, show where you passed, you were swift, swift, hear the forest-ledged slopes, rain has furrowed the roots, your hand caught at this, the root snapped under your weight, I can almost follow the note where it touched this slender tree and the next answered and the next, and you climbed yet further, you stopped by the dwarf corner, world on your heels, doubled on your track, this is clear, you fell on the downward slope, you dragged a bruised thigh, you limped, you clutched this larch, did your head bent back, search further, clear through the green leaf moss of the larch branches, did you clutch, stammer with short breath and gasp, wood demons grant life, give life, I am almost lost, for some wood demon has lightened your steps, I find no trace of you in the larch cones of the underbrush, and the comb this recording is in the public domain. And under each the shadowy sharp, and between the clenched muscles of your slender hips, from the circle of your cropped hair there is light, and about your male torus and the foot arch and the straight ankle, you stand rigid and mighty, granite and the oar in brocks, a great band clasps your forehead and its heavy twists of gold, you are white, a limb of cypress bent under a weight of snow, you are splendid, your arms are fire, you have entered the hill straights, a sea treads upon the hill slopes, myrtle is about your head, you have bent and caught the spray, each leaf is sharp against the lift and furrow of your bound hair, the narcissist has copied the arch of your slight breast, your feet are citron flowers, your knees cut from white ash, your thighs are rock, cystus, your chin lift straight from the hollow of your curved throat, your shoulders are level, they have melted rare silver for their breath. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Such great heads as yours drift upon temple steps, but you are shattered in the wind, myrtle bark is flecked from you, scales are dashed from your stem, sand cuts your petal, furrows it with hard edge, like flint on a bright stone, yet though the whole wind slash at your bark, you are lifted up, aye, though it hiss to cover you with froth. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Wind Sleepers by Hilda Doolittle, readforlippervox.org by Kathleen, wider than the crust left by the tide. We are stung by the hurled sand and the broken shells. We no longer sleep in the wind. We awoke and fled through the city gate, tear, tear us and alter, tug at the cliff, boulders, pile them with the rough stones. We no longer sleep in the wind, propitiate us, chant in a whale that never halts, pace a circle and pay tribute with a song. When the roar of a dropped wave breaks into it, poor meated words of seahawks and gulls and seabirds that cry discords. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Gift by Hilda Doolittle, readforlippervox.org by Kathleen. Instead of pearls, a wrought clasp, a bracelet. Will you accept this? You know the script. You will start. Wonder. What is left? 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 tassel, unraveled, 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 heartbeat 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 scavenger's pit. I escape. I only, rejecting it, lying here on this couch. Your garden slope to the beach, myrtle overround the paths, honey and amber flack to each leaf. The citron lily head, one among many, weighed their oversweet. The myrrh hyacinth spread across low slopes, violet streaked black ridges through the grass. The house, too, was like this, overpainted, over-lovely. The world is like this, sleepless nights. I remember the initiates, their gesture, their calm glance. I have heard how enrapt 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, chicory. A common grass tip. A leaf shadow. A flower tent. 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. Stretch of sand. No garden beyond. Strangling with its murrlillies. 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. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Evening, Bayhilde Doolittle. Red for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. The light passes from ridge to ridge, from flower to flower. The hepaticus widespread under the light grow faint. The petals reach inward. The blue tips bend toward the bluer heart and the flowers are lost. The cornell buds are still white. But shadows dart from the cornell roots. Black creeps from root to root. Each leaf cuts another leaf on the grass. Shadows seek shadow. Then both leaf and leaf shadow are lost. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Sheltered Garden by Hilde Doolittle. Red for LibriVox.org by Rumpelth Poetry. I have had enough. I gasp for breath. Every way ends. Every road. Every footpath leads 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, sweetcress. Oh, 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, shriveled 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. Oh, to blot out this garden, to forget, to find a new beauty in some terrible, wind-tortured place. Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain. Treasures build near the shrub pines to bleach on the boulders. Your stalk has caught root among wet pebbles, and drift flung by the sea, and grated shells and split conk shells. Beautiful, wide-spread fire upon leaf. What meadow yields so fragrant a leaf, as your bright leaf. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Loss by Hilda Doolittle. Read for LibriVox.org by Nima. Loss. The sea called. You faced the estuary. You were drowned as the tide passed. I'm glad of this. At least you have escaped. The heavy sea mist stifles me. I choke with each breath. A curious peril this, the gods have invented, curious torture for us. One of us, pierced in the flank, dragged himself across the marsh. He tore at the bay roots, lost, pulled on the crumbling bank. Another crawled, too late, for shelter under the cliffs. I'm glad the tide swept you out, oh beloved. You of all this ghastly host alone untouched. Your white flesh, covered with salt, as with myrrh and burnt iris. We were hemmed in this place, so few of us, so few of us, to fight their shorelances. A straight thrust, effortless, with slight life of muscle and shoulder. So straight, only we were left, the four of us, somehow shut off. And the marsh dragged one back, and another perished under the cliff. And the tide swept you out. Your feet cut steel on the paths. I followed for the strength of life and grasp. I've seen beautiful feet, but never beauty welded with strength. I marveled at your height. You stood almost level with the lance-bearers, and so slight. And I wondered, as you clasped your shoulder strap at the strength of your wrist, and the turn of your young fingers, and the lift of your shorn locks, and the bronze of your sun-burnt neck. All of this, and the curious kneecap, fitted above the wrought greaves, and the sharp muscles of your back, which the tunic could not cover. The outline, no garment could deface. I wonder if you knew how I watched, how I crowded before the spearsmen. But the gods wanted you. The gods wanted you back. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Ballycler in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The 5th of June, 2019. Huntress, come, blunt your spear with us. Our pace is hot, and our bear hails in the hail-prints. We stand tense, do you say? Are you already beaten by the chase? We lead the pace for the wind and the hills. The low hill is spattered with loose earth. Our feet cut into the crust as with spears. We climbed the plowed land, dragged the seed from the clefts, broke the clods with our heels, whirled with a perch cry into the woods. Can you come? Can you come? Can you follow the haunt trail? Can you trample the hot froth? Spring up, sway forward, follow the quickest one. Aye, though you leave the trail, and drop exhausted at our feet. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. By Hilda Doolittle. Red for Libber Vox. By Chad Horner. From Balleclair. In County Anton, Northern Ireland. The 1st of June, 2019. Garden. You are clear, oh rose, cut in rock. Hard as the descent of hail. I would scrape the colour from the petals, like split dye from a rock. If I could break you, I could break a tree. If I could stir you, I could break a tree. I could break you. Oh wind, rend open the heat. Cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop through this thick air. Fruit cannot fall into heat, that presses up and blunts. The points of pairs, and rhymes the grapes. Cut the heat, fly it through, turning it on either side of your path. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Sea Violet. By Hilda Doolittle. Red for Libber Vox. By Chad Horner. From Balleclair. In County Anton, Northern Ireland. The 1st of June, 2019. Sea Violet. The white violet is scinted on its stalk. The sea violet fragile as a gate. Lies fronting all the wind. Among the torn shells on the sea bank. The greater blue violets flutter on the hill. But who would change for these? Who would change for these? One root of the white sort. Violet, your grasp is frail. On the edge of the sand hill. But you catch the light frost. A star edges with its fire. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Cliff Temple. By Hilda Doolittle. Red for Libber Vox. By Chad Horner. From Balleclair. In County Anton, Northern Ireland. The 1st of August, 2019. The Cliff Temple. Great bright portal. Shelf of rock. Rocks fit it in long ledges. Rocks fit it to dark. To silver granite. To lighter rock. Clean cut. White against white. High high and no hill goat. Troubles. No mountain sheep. Has set foot on your fine grass. You lift. You are the world edge. Pillar for the sky arch. The world heaven. We are next to the sky. Over us, Seahawks shout. Girls sweep past. The terrible breakers are silent. From this place. Below us on the rock edge. Where earth is caught. In the fissures. Of the jagged cliff. A small tree stiffens. In the gale. It bends. But its white flowers are frequent. At this height. And under and under. The wind booms. It whistles. It thunders. It groils. It presses the grass. Beneath its great fate. I said. Forever and forever. Must I follow you. Through the stones. I catch at you. You lurch. Your quicker. Lamp my hand grasp. I wandered at you. I shout at deer. Mysterious. Beautiful. White myrtle flesh. I was splintered in torn. The hill path mounted. Swifter than my feet. Could a daemon avenge this hurt? I would cry to him. Could a ghost? I would shout. Oh evil. Follow this God. Tunt him with his evil and his vice. Shall I hurl myself from here? Shall I leap and be near you? Shall I drop beloved? Beloved? Angle against angle? Would you pity me, oh white breast? If I woke, would you pity me? Would our eyes meet? Have you heard? Do you know how I climbed this rock? My breath caught. I lurched forward. Stumbled in the ground myrtle. Have you heard, oh God seated on the cliff? How far toward the ledges of your house? How far I had to walk? Over me the wind swirls. I have stood on your portal and I know. You are further than this. Still further on another cliff. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Spare us the beauty of fruit trees. The honey-seeking paused not. The air thundered their song, and I alone was prostrate. O rough-hewn God of the orchard, I bring you an offering. Do you, alone, unbeautiful, Son of the God, spare us from loveliness? These fallen hazelnuts, stripped late of their green sheaths, grapes, red-purple, their berries dripping with wine, pomegranates already broken, and shrunken figs and quinces untouched, I bring you an offering. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. They say there is no hope to conjure you, no whip of the tongue to anger you, no hate of words you must rise to refute. They say you are twisted by the sea, you are cut apart by wave-break upon wave-break, that you are misshapen by the sharp rocks broken by the rasp and after-rasp. That you are cut, torn, mangled, torn by the stress and beat, no stronger than the strips of sand along your ragged beach. But we bring violets, great masses, single-sweet wood-violets, stream-violets, violets from a wet marsh, violets in comps from hills, tufts with earth at the roots, violets tugged from rocks, blue-violets, moss, cliff, river-violets, yellow-violets gold burnt with a rare tint, violets like red ash among tufts of grass. We bring deep purple bird-foot violets, we bring the hyacinth violet, sweet bear chilled to the touch, and violets whiter than the inrush of your own white surf. For you will come, you will yet haunt men in ships, you will trail across the fringe of strait and circle the jagged rocks, you will trail across the rocks and wash them with your salt, you will curl between sand hills, you will thunder along the cliff, break, retreat, get fresh strength, gather and pour weight upon the beach, you will draw back and the ripple on the sand shelf will be witness of your track. Oh, privet white, you will paint the lintel of wet sand with froth, you will bring myrbark and drift laurel wood from hot coasts, when your hurl high, high, we will answer with a shout. For you will come, you will come, you will answer our taut hearts, you will break the lie of men's thoughts and cherish and shelter us. In the poem, this recording is in the public domain. To me, to Dictatius, and to the steep slopes, to the river irrimanthus, I choose spray of ditany, cyperum, frail of flower, buds of myrrh, all hailing herbs, close pressed in calliths. For she lies panting, drawing sharp breath, broken with harsh sobs, she he yellah, whom no god putties, triads hunting the groves, ne'er reads who dwell in wet caves. For all the white leaves of olive branch, and early roses, and ivy wreaths, woven gold berries, which she once brought to your altars, bear now ripe fruits from Arcadia, and Assyrian wine, to shatter her fever. The light of her face falls from its flower, as a hyacinth, hidden in the far valley, perishes upon burnt grass, peels bring gifts, bring your Phoenician stuffs, and do you, fleet foot at nymphs, bring offerings, Ilarian iris, and the branch of shrub, and frail headed poppies. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Night by Hilda Doolittle, read for LibriVox.org by Laurie Wilson The night has cut each from each and curled the petals back from the stalk, and under it in crisp rose, under at an unfaltering pace, under till the rinds break, back till each bent leaf is parted from its stalk, under at a grave pace, under till the leaves are bent back till they drop upon earth, back till they are all broken. O night you take the petals of the roses in your hand, but leave the stark core of the rose to perish on the branch. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Prisoners by Hilda Doolittle, read for LibriVox.org by Neema Prisoners, it is strange that I should want this sight of your face. We have had so much. At any moment now I may pass, stand near the gate, do not speak, only reach if you can, your face half-fronting the passage toward the light. Fate. God sends this as a mark, a last token that we are not forgot, lost in this turmoil, about to be crushed out, burned or stamped out, at best with sudden death. The spearsman who brings this will ask for the gold clasp you wear under your coat. I gave all I had left. Press close to the portal. My gate will soon clang and your fellow wretches will crowd to the entrance, be first at the gate. Ah, beloved, do not speak. I write this in great taste. Do not speak. You may yet be released. I am glad enough to depart, though I have never tasted life as in these last weeks. It is a strange life, patterned in fire and letters on the prison pavement. If I glance up, it is written on the walls. It is cut on the floor. It is patterned across the slope of the roof. I am weak, weak. Last night, if the guard had left the gate unlocked, I could not have ventured to escape, but one thought serves me now with strength. As I pass down the corridor, past desperate faces at each cell, your eyes and my eyes may meet. You will be dark, unkempt, but I pray for one glimpse of your face. Why do I want this? I, who have seen you at the banquet, each flower of your hyacinth circlet white against your hair. Why do I want this? When even last night you startled me from sleep, you stood against the dark rock, you grasped an alder staff. So many nights you have distracted me from terror once you lived to the spear flower. I remember how you stooped to gather it and had flamed the leaf and shoot in the threads, yellow, yellow, sheer till they burnt to red-purple on the cup. As I passed your cell door to not speak, I was first on the list. They may forget you tried to shield me as the horseman passed. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Sea Iris by Hilda Doolittle. Read for LibriVox.org by Laurie Wilson. Weed, moss weed, root tangled in sand. Sea Iris brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken and you print a shadow like a thin twig. Fortunate ones, scented and stinging, rigid myrrh bud, camphor flower, sweet and salt. You are wind in our nostrils. Do the Murex fishers drench you as they pass? Do your roots drag up color from the sand? Have they slipped gold under you rivets of gold? Band of Iris flowers above the waves you are painted blue, painted like a fresh prow stained among the saltweeds. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Hermes of the Way by Hilda Doolittle. Read for LibriVox.org by Chad Horner from Benidorm in the province of Alicante in eastern Spain, the 5th of June 2019. Hermes of the Ways, the hard sand bricks and the grains of it are clear as wine. Far off over the lakes of it, the wind playing on the wide shore piles little ridges and the great waves break over it. But more than the many foamed ways of the sea I know him of the tripled pathways. Hermes who awaits, dubious facing three ways, welcoming wayfarers, in whom the sea orchard, shelters from the west, from the east, weathers sea wind, fronts the great dunes. Wind rushes over the dunes and the course, salt-crusted grass answers. How it whips round my ankles. Small is this wide stream, flowing below ground, from the popular shaded hill. But the water is sweet. Apples on the small trees are hard, too small, too late, ripened. By a desperate sun, that struggles through sea mist. The boughs of the trees are twisted. By many bafflings, twisted are the small leafed boughs. But the shadow of them is not the shadow of the mast head, nor of the torn sails. Hermes, Hermes, the great sea foamed, gnashed its teeth about me. But you have waited, where sea grass tangles with shore grass. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Pair Tree, by Hilda Doolittle, Redford LibriVox.org, by Larry Wilson. Silver dust lifted from the earth, higher than my arms reach. You have mounted, oh silver, higher than my arms reach. You front us with great mass. No flower ever opened, so staunch a white leaf. No flower ever parted silver from such rare silver. Oh white pear, your flower tuffs thick on the branch, bring summer and ripe fruits in their purple hearts. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Cities, by Hilda Doolittle, Redford LibriVox.org, by Larry Wilson. Can we believe, by an effort comfort our hearts? It is not waste all this. Not placed here in disgust, street after street, each patterned alike, no grace to lighten a single house of the hundred crowded into one garden space. Crowded, can we believe, not in utter disgust, an ironical play. But the maker of cities grew faint with the beauty of temple and space before temple, arch upon perfect arch of pillars and corridors that led out to strange courtyards and porches, where sunlight stamped hyacinths' shadows black on the pavement. That the maker of cities grew faint with the splendor of palaces, paused while the incense flowers from the incense trees dropped on the marble walk, thought anew, fashioned this street after street alike. For alas he had crowded the city so full that men could not grasp beauty. Beauty was over them, through them, about them, no crevice unpacked with the honey, rare, majorless. So he built a new city. Ah, can we believe, not ironically, but for new splendor, constructed new people to lift through slow growth, to a beauty unrivaled yet, and created new cells. Hideous first, hideous now, spread larvae across them, not honey, but sieving life. And in these dark cells, packed street after street, souls lived, hideous yet, oh, disfigured, defaced, with no trace of the beauty men once held so light. Can we think of you old cells were left? We are left grains of honey, old dust of stray pollen, dull on our torn wings. We are left to recall the old streets. Is our task the less sweet that the larvae still sleep in their cells, or crawl out to attack our frail strength? You are useless. We live. We await great events. We are spread through this earth. We protect our strong race. You are useless. Your cell takes the place of our young future strength. Though they sleep or wake to torment and wish to displace our old cells, thin, rare gold, that their larvae grow fat, is our task the less sweet. Though we wander about, find no honey of flowers in this waste, is our task the less sweet, who recall the old splendor, await the new beauty of the cities. In the poem this recording is in the public domain. The city is peopled by Hilda Doolittle, read for LibriVox.org. The city is peopled with spirits, not ghosts, oh my love. Though they crowd it between and you serve the kiss of my mouth, their breath was your gift, their beauty, your life. In the poem this recording is in the public domain. End of Sea Garden by Hilda Doolittle