The light passes from ridge to ridge, from flower to flower— the hepaticas, wide—spread under the light

I first tasted under Apollo’s lip… love and love sweetness, I, Evadne; my hair is made of crisp violets or hyacinth which the wind combs b…

Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone

YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through

Whirl up, sea— whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us,

The mysteries remain, I keep the same cycle of seed—time and of sun and rain; Demeter in the grass,

Weed, moss—weed, root tangled in sand, sea—iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken,

I should have thought in a dream you would have brought some lovely, perilous thing, orchids piled in a great sheath, as who would say (in a dream),

From citron—bower be her bed, cut from branch of tree a—flower, fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, cut the width of board and lathe,

Bear me to Dictaeus, and to the steep slopes; to the river Erymanthus. I choose spray of dittany, cyperum, frail of flower,

Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent

Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea—fish. I cover you with my net. What are you —banded one?

Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down

Silver dust lifted from the earth, higher than my arms reach, you have mounted. O silver,