I saw the first pear as it fell— the honey—seeking, golden—banded, the yellow swarm was not more fleet than I,

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

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

Will you glimmer on the sea? Will you fling your spear—head On the shore? What note shall we pitch? We have a song,

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

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

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

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),

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

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