SEA ROSE

Rose, harsh rose
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,

more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem --
you are caught in the drift.

Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?

-- Hilda Doolittle (1916)


Copyright © 1982 by the Estate of Hilda Doolittle. Used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher.
Sheltered Garden . . . Helen . . . Heat . . . Garden . . . Leda . . . Let Zeus
Eurydice . . . Fragment 68 . . . Pear Tree . . . Sea Poppies . . . Mysteries Remain

. . .