Sea garden / H. D. [electronic text]

PRISONERS

IT is strange that I should want this sight of your face— we have had so much: at any moment now I may pass, stand near the gate, do not speak— only reach if you can, your face half-fronting the passage toward the light.

Fate—God sends this as a mark, a last token that we are not forgot, lost in this turmoil, about to be crushed out, burned or stamped out at best with sudden death.

The spearsman who brings this will ask for the gold clasp you wear under your coat. I gave all I had left.

Press close to the portal, my gate will soon clang and your fellow wretches will crowd to the entrance— be first at the gate.

Ah beloved, do not speak. I write this in great haste— do not speak, you may yet be released.

I am glad enough to depart though I have never tasted life as in these last weeks.

It is a strange life, patterned in fire and letters on the prison pavement. If I glance up it is written on the walls, it is cut on the floor, it is patterned across the slope of the roof.

I am weak—weak— last night if the guard had left the gate unlocked I could not have ventured to escape,. but one thought serves me now with strength.

As I pass down the corridor past desperate faces at each cell, your eyes and my eyes may meet.

You will be dark, unkempt, but I pray for one glimpse of your face— why do I want this? I who have seen you at the banquet each flower of your hyacinth-circlet white against your hair.

Why do I want this, when even last night you startled me from sleep? You stood against the dark rock, you grasped an elder staff.

So many nights you have distracted me from terror. Once you lifted a spear-flower. I remember how you stooped to gather it— and it flamed, the leaf and shoot and the threads, yellow, yellow— sheer till they burnt to red-purple in the cup.

As I pass your cell-door do not speak. I was first on the list— They may forget you tried to shield me as the horsemen passed.