Fall is in the air

from Eurydice

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

so for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I am swept back
where dead lichens drip
dead cinders upon moss of ash;

so for your arrogance
I am broken at last,
I who had lived unconscious,
who was almost forgot;

if you had let me wait
I had grown from listlessness
into peace,
if you had let me rest with the dead,
I had forgot you
and the past.

VII
At least I have the flowers of myself,
and my thoughts, no god
can take that;
I have the fervor 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.

H.D.

Barbara Guest led me back to H.D. This is an excerpt from the longer poem that appears in H.D. Selected Poems. Jorie Graham has a Eurydice poem that is full of broken color too. I didn't include H.D.'s middle stanzas (I'm wary these days of blogger's weird way with poetry.)
But the colors she throws are worth reading, like a Joan Mitchell canvas.