H. D.(HILDA DOOLITTLE) (1886–1961)
The Walls Do Not Fall
An incident here and there,
and rails gone (for guns)
from your (and my) old town square:
mist and mist-grey, no colour,
still the Luxor7 bee, chick and hare
pursue unalterable purpose
in green, rose-red, lapis;
they continue to prophesy
from the stone papyrus:
there, as here, ruin opens
the tomb, the temple; enter,
there as here, there are no doors:
the shrine lies open to the sky,
the rain falls, here, there
sand drifts; eternity endures:
ruin everywhere, yet as the fallen roof
leaves the sealed room
open to the air,
so, through our desolation,
thoughts stir, inspiration stalks us
through gloom:
unaware, Spirit announces the Presence;
shivering overtakes us,
as of old, Samuel:8
trembling at a known street-corner,
we know not nor are known;
the Pythian9 pronounces—we pass on
to another cellar, to another sliced wall
where poor utensils show
like rare objects in a museum;
Pompeii1 has nothing to teach us,
we know crack of volcanic fissure,
slow flow of terrible lava,
pressure on heart, lungs, the brain
about to burst its brittle case
(what the skull can endure!):
over us, Apocryphal2 fire,
under us, the earth sway, dip of a floor,
slope of a pavement
where men roll, drunk
with a new bewilderment,
sorcery, bedevilment:
the bone-frame was made for
no such shock knit within terror,
yet the skeleton stood up to it:
the flesh it was melted away,
the heart burnt out, dead ember,
tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered,
yet the frame held:
we passed the flame: we wonder
what saved us what for