At Baia in  General   

I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff—
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous—perilous—
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."

By H. D.

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Other poems by H. D.:

• At Baia
• Eurydice
• Fragment Sixty-eight
• Garden
• Heat
• Helen
• Helen In Egypt
• Leda
• Let Zeus
• Mid-Day
• Never More Will The Wind
• Pear Tree
• Sea Poppies
• Sea Rose
• Sheltered Garden
• Song
• Stars Wheel in Purple