Quotes from H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

At least I have the flowers of myself, and my thoughts, no god can take that; I have the fervour of myself for a presence and my own spirit for light; and my spirit with its loss knows this; though small against the black, small against the formless rocks, hell must break before I am lost; before I am lost, hell must open like a red rose for the dead to pass.

There's a black rose growing in your garden.

remember the golden apple-trees; O, do not pity them, as you watch them drop one by one, for they fall exhausted, numb, blind but in certain ecstasy, for theirs is the hunger for Paradise.

yet for all your arrogance and your glance, I tell you this: such loss is no loss, such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls of blackness such terror is no loss; hell is no worse than your earth above the earth, hell is no worse, no, nor your flowers nor your veins of light nor your presence, a loss; my hell is no worse than yours though you pass among the flowers and speak with the spirits above the earth.

Let us search the old highways.

let us not teach / what we have learned badly / and not profited by

grape, knife, cup, wheat / are symbols in eternity, / and every concrete object / has abstract value, is timeless / in the dream parallel