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

Can we believe—by an effort comfort our hearts: it is not waste all this, not placed here in disgust, street after street,

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

Thou art come at length More beautiful Than any cool god In a chamber under Lycia’s far coast,

O be swift— we have always known you wanted us… We fled inland with our flocks. we pastured them in hollows, cut off from the wind

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

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

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

White, O white face— from disenchanted days wither alike dark rose and fiery bays: no gift within our hands,

NOR skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar—wood be over you, Nor the fir—tree

So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the l… above the earth, I who could have slept among the l… at last;

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