Still the walls do not fall,
I do not know why;
there is zrr-hiss,
lightning in a not-known,
unregistered dimension;
we are powerless,
dust and powder fill our lungs
our bodies blunder
through doors twisted on hinges,
and the lintels slant
cross-wise;
we walk continually
on thin air
that thickens to a blind fog,
then step swiftly aside,
for even the air
is independable,
thick where it should be fine
and tenuous
where wings separate and open,
and the ether
is heavier than the floor,
and the floor sags
like a ship floundering ;
we know no rule
of procedure,
we are voyagers, discoverers
of the not-known,
the unrecorded;
we have no map;
possibly we will reach haven,
heaven.
O, do not look up
into the air,
you who are occupied
in the bewildering
sand-heap maze
of present-day endeavour ;
you will be, not so much frightened
as paralysed with inaction,
and anyhow,
we have not crawled so very far
up our individual grass-blade
toward our individual star.
We have had too much consecration,
too little affirmation,
too much : but this, this, this
has been proved heretical,
too little : I know, I feel
the meaning that words hide ;
they are anagrams, cryptograms,
little boxes, conditioned
to hatch butterflies...
and then... music ? O, what I meant
by music when I said music, was -
music sets up ladders,
it makes us invisible,
it sets us apart,
it lets us escape ;
but from the visible
there is no escape ;
there is no escape from the spear
that pierces the heart.
we have given until we have no more to give ;
alas, it was pity, rather than love, we gave ;
now having given all, let us leave all ;
above all, let us leave pity
and mount higher
to love - resurrection.
A rare recording of H.D.'s voice. She reads from her poem "Helen in Egypt."