H.D: The Flowering of the Rod

To Norman Holmes Pearson

…pause to give
thanks that we rise again from death and live.

I
O the beautiful garment,
the beautiful raiment —

do not think of His face
or even His hands,

do not think how we will stand
before Him;

remember the snow
on Hermon;

do not look below
where the blue gentian

reflects geometric pattern
in the ice-floe;

do not be beguiled
by the geometry of perfection

for even now,
the terrible banner

darkens the bridge-head;
we have shown

that we could stand;
we have withstood

the anger, frustration,
bitter fire of destruction;

leave the smoldering cities below
(we have done all we could),

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.

II
I go where I love and where I am loved,
into the snow;

I go to the things I love
with no thought of duty or pity;

I go where I belong, inexorably,
as the rain that has lain long

in the furrow; I have given
or would have given

life to the grain;
but if it will not grow or ripen

with the rain of beauty,
the rain will return to the cloud;

the harvester sharpens his steel on the stone;
but this is not our field,

we have not sown this;
pitiless, pitiless, let us leave

The-place-of-a-skull
to those who have fashioned it.

III
In resurrection, there is confusion
if we start to argue; if we stand and stare,

we do not know where to go;
in resurrection, there is simple affirmation,

but do not delay to round up the others,
up and down the street; your going

in a moment like this, is the best proof
that you know the way;

does the first wild-goose stop to explain
to the others? no—he is off;

they follow or not
that is their affair;

does the first wild-goose care
whether the others follow or not?

I don’t think so—he is so happy to be off—
he knows where he is going;

so we must be drawn or we must fly,
like the snow-geese of the Arctic circle,

to the Carolinas or to Florida,
or like those migratory flocks

who still (they say) hover
over the lost island, Atlantis;

seeking what we once knew,
we know ultimately we will find

happiness; to-day shalt thou be
with me in Paradise.

IV
Blue-geese, white-geese, you may say,
yes, I know this duality, this double nostalgia;

I know the insatiable longing
in winter, for palm shadow

and sand and burnt sea-drift;
but in the summer, as I watch

the wave till its edge of foam
touches the hot sand and instantly

vanishes like snow on the equator,
I would cry out, stay, stay;

then I remember delicate enduring frost
and its mid-winter dawn-pattern;

in the hot noon-sun, I think of the gray
opalescent winter-dawn, as the wave

burns on the shingle, I think,
you are less beautiful than frost;

but it is also true that I pray,
O, give me burning blue

and brittle burnt sea-weed
above the tide-line,

as I stand, still unsatisfied,
under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine.

~~

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The Poem: H.D. began the Trilogy series in 1942, comprising three long, unrhyming, and complex volumes of poems: The Walls do not Fall, Tribute to the Angels and The Flowering of the Rod. H.D. wrote the first while living in London during the Blitz and details her reactions to it and the destruction of World War II in general. The following two books compare the ruins of London to those of ancient Egypt and classical Greece. She composed The Flowering of the Rod in London December 18-31, 1944, and the poem argues that the destruction of the city is caused by an imbalance between the male and female forces of civilization, and humankind should embrace the female as a way to balance the destructive forces of the male. The title The Flowering of the Rod symbolizes this unity of female and male, and throughout the poem, the speaker encourages the reader to leave behind “the-place-of-a-skull” and embrace instead the promise of rebirth and transformation: not resurrection in the Christian sense, but rather return and resurgence as the ancient myths proclaim. The annual migration of birds and the flowering of the fields are models for the cycles of civilization.

~~

The Poet: An innovative modernist American writer, Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961) wrote under her initials in a career that stretched from 1909 to 1961. H.D., most well known for her lyric and epic poetry, also wrote novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, a children’s book, and translations. An American woman who lived her adult life abroad, H.D. was engaged in the formalist experimentation that preoccupied much of her generation. A range of thematic concerns resonates through her writing: the role of the poet, the civilian representation of war, material and mythologized ancient cultures, the role of national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and religion and spirituality. After living abroad most of her life, she returned to the United States in 1960 to become the first woman recognized with the Award of Merit Medal for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.