Straight Talk, Straight as the Greek

"STRAIGHT TALK, STRAIGHT AS THE GREEK"

Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle, 1912

Before he sent her poems-sea grasses, poppies,

hyacinths that stirred him-to Chicago,

he watched the branchy woman in the tearoom

of the British Museum, blond hair in bangs, lean body

draped in a kind of chiton, like Diana

carved in a stone relief. Her beauty's anchor

| weighed him down: Was this the impetuous girl

with bonewhite hands, who scooped up fallen apples,

stroked maple leaves and found a lofty crow's nest

in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, only six years

before, only a century of moments

earlier, who uttered laconic phrases,

who held up arms to rain, who hurled herself

into great waves? If so, now, breakers calm,

she gave him sea-wind bearing her taut mind,

faint hepaticas that carried evening

and death, a harsh rose that held their love.

"Dryad," the name he'd given her, lived on

in her own whittled lines. He touched the rose,

recalled the chalky dryad, shut his eyes,

blackened her name on the page and gave her another:

"H. D., Imagiste.' Before he posted them,

he held them for a long time, listening

to a new wind scour flat rocks on a far shore.