Sheltered Garden by H. D.

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 8, 2017   Sheltered Garden   H. D.

I have had enough. I gasp for breath.   Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at 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, sweet-cress.   O 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, shrivelled 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.   O to blot out this garden to forget, to find a new beauty in some terrible wind-tortured place.            This poem is in the public domain. About This Poem   "Sheltered Garden" was first published in Sea Garden (Constable and Company, Ltd, 1916).   Hilda Doolittle was born on September 10, 1886, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her collections of poetry include Red Roses for Bronze (Random House, 1929) and Helen in Egypt (New Directions, 1961). She died in 1961.   Photo credit: Perdita Schaffner/New Directions Poetry by H. D.   Trilogy (New Directions, 1998) "When Ecstasy is Inconvenient" by Lorine Niedecker "Willow Poem" by William Carlos Williams "A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M." by Amy Lowell Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038