Sea Iris

By H. D. 1886–1961 H. D.

Weed, moss-weed,

root tangled in sand,

sea-iris, brittle flower,

one petal like a shell

is broken,

and you print a shadow

like a thin twig.

Fortunate one,

scented and stinging,

rigid myrrh-bud,

camphor-flower,

sweet and salt—you are wind

in our nostrils.

Do the murex-fishers

drench you as they pass?

Do your roots drag up colour

from the sand?

Have they slipped gold under you—

rivets of gold?

Band of iris-flowers

above the waves,

you are painted blue,

painted like a fresh prow

stained among the salt weeds.

Source: Collected Poems 1912-1944 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, )

Biography

H.D.’s life and work recapitulate the central themes of literary modernism: the emergence from Victorian norms and certainties, the entry into an age characterized by rapid technological change and the violence of two great wars, and the development of literary modes which reflected the disintegration of traditional symbolic systems and the mythmaking quest for new meanings. H.D.’s oeuvre spans five decades of the twentieth . . .

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