The Tree

List of characters played by solo performer

H.D.	Hilda Doolittle, age 67; the play’s narrator (English intonation)
HILDA	A young Hilda Doolittle (American)
EZRA	American writer; childhood friend and adolescent love of Hilda
MRS DOOLITTLE	Hilda’s mother
MR DOOLITTLE	Hilda’s father
OLD SCHOOL FRIEND	High school friend
FRANCES	Frances Gregg, university friend and love of Hilda
ENGLISH CRITIC	Figure on London literary scene
BERTIE	Socialite on London literary scene
MARGARET	Margaret Cravens, American pianist, patron of Ezra
DELIA	Hostess on London literary scene
BRIGIT	Brigit Patmore, English member of the Imagist circle
RICHARD	Richard Aldington, English writer, husband of Hilda
MAID	Maid of Margaret Cravens in Paris
NURSE	In London after birth of daughter
OFFICIAL	Marries Hilda and Richard Aldington
ARABELLA	Arabella Yorke, mistress of Richard Aldington
ENGLISH MAN, AMERICAN MAN	Gossips at party for D.H. Lawrence
LAWRENCE	D.H. Lawrence, English writer, married to Frieda Lawrence
FRIEDA LAWRENCE	German émigreé; married to D.H. Lawrence
LANDLADY	At pension in Ealing and in Cornwall
GRAY	Cecil Gray, Scottish composer, friend of the Lawrences, father of Perdita Aldington, Hilda’s daughter
BRYHER	Bryher Ellerman, shipping heiress; long-time partner of Hilda
FREUD	Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst; treated Hilda in 1933–34
Pre-recorded voices
ERICH HEYDT	H.D.’s analyst in Switzerland, 1953–61
POUND	One voiceover as indicated

ACT I

At rise, H.D. sits C.S. The setting is

at Dr Brunner’s house in Küsnacht,

Switzerland, 1953.¹

HEYDT² (VOICE)

Frau Aldington, thank you for waiting. Now, as I understand it you have been here at Dr Brunner’s house for a few weeks now …

H.D.

Yes.

HEYDT (VOICE)

You prefer it to the clinic?

H.D. raises her eyebrows as though

to say “wouldn’t you?”

HEYDT (VOICE)

You have a history of breakdown. It is true that the war was difficult on many.

H.D. is silent.

HEYDT (VOICE)

Now, if you will extend your arm, Sister will administer a hypodermic to help you relax.

H.D. extends her arm, slowly.

Blackout. Lights rise on a new

session. H.D. rubs her arm where the

hypodermic has been inserted.

HEYDT (VOICE)

You know Ezra Pound,³ don’t you?

H.D.

(To audience) A shock from a stranger. Perhaps he has injected me or re-injected me with Ezra. What business is it of his?

HEYDT (VOICE)

I saw him, you know.

H.D. looks up.

HEYDT (VOICE)

When I was travelling in America on fellowship. I visited various hospitals and clinics. I saw him in the garden surrounded by a circle of visitors – disciples, really. I asked who they were. I had seen some of them in the canteen.

H.D.

(To audience) I do not want to talk of this.

HEYDT (VOICE)

Why do you look out of the window? I am talking to you.

H.D.

I was too weak to listen or care. But maybe I did care.⁴

Short blackout. A new session.

HEYDT (VOICE)

You must write about him.

H.D.

But what I write, they don’t like.⁵

HEYDT (VOICE)

Then why were you so excited when you read those notes to me?

H.D.

I don’t know – I don’t know – it’s the fiery moment but it’s all so long ago.

HEYDT (VOICE)

It has no time. It’s existentialist –

H.D.

(To audience) There’s a word I can never cope with –

HEYDT (VOICE)

It has no time, it’s out of time, eternal.⁶

H.D.

Dr Erich Heydt injected me with Ezra, jabbing a needle into my arm, “You know Ezra Pound, don’t you?” That was almost five years ago. It took a long time for the virus or the antivirus to take effect. But the hypodermic needle did its work, or didn’t it? There was an incalculable element.⁷

POUND (VOICE)

My only real criticism is that it is not my child!⁸

H.D.

He lay on the floor of the Iron Cage and wrote the Pisan Cantos.⁹ He lay on the floor … Mussolini strung up by his ankles. Ezra would have destroyed me and the centre they call “Air and Crystal” in my poetry.¹⁰

HEYDT (VOICE)

Frau Aldington, I must leave for a moment. Will you wait?

H.D.

Yes. (Sounds of door closing) Where would I go?

A turn-of-the-century dance song

plays. H.D. listens for a moment,

trying to place the music.

H.D.

(To audience) In 1901, Ezra Pound was maybe sixteen; I was a year younger. Immensely sophisticated, immensely superior, immensely rough-and-ready, a product not like any of my brothers and brothers’ friends.¹¹ I suffered excruciatingly from his clumsy dancing.¹² I suffered, indeed I suppose we all did. He himself, in a certain sense, made no mistakes. He gave, he took. He gave extravagantly.¹³ One would dance with him for what he might say.¹⁴

The music grows louder. H.D.

is “danced” around the chair and

becomes a young HILDA in the

process. Both EZRA and HILDA are

out of breath.

EZRA

Hilda Doolittle. What a queer name. Hasn’t anyone ever told you you look more like a wood spirit? A dryad.¹⁵ A very tall one.¹⁶

HILDA

No. And what are you supposed to be?

EZRA

Well, it’s a Hallowe’en party, isn’t it? I am a Tunisian princeling. I purchased this headpiece on my travels in Africa.¹⁷

HILDA

Africa?

EZRA

Yes. Tunisia. Extraordinary culture. I wrote a great many poems to tall women while I was there.¹⁸

Music ends.

H.D.

A group of us, young poets, Ezra and William Carlos Williams, I and others would go to parties and picnics. Ezra had been everywhere – to Europe. He tried to educate us.

EZRA

Now Bill, Hilda, try this. It’s a French cheese called brie.

HILDA

But the ham sandwiches?

EZRA

Just try the brie, Dryad, it’s … educational.

HILDA

Oh, Ezra, it’s hideous. Isn’t it, Bill?

EZRA

You – you are philistines – you have no palates. No palates! Blast – it’s starting to rain. Get the books, Bill. Come on, Dryad, run for the tree.

H.D.

But rain was transfixing in Philadelphia. Transformative.

HILDA

Come, beautiful rain. Beautiful rain, welcome.¹⁹ (Runs as though into the sea)

Whirl up sea –

whirl your pointed pines,

splash your great pines

on our rocks,

hurl your green over us,

cover us with your pools of fir.²⁰

MRS DOOLITTLE²¹

Wake up, Hilda, wake up. You walked out into the sea and were taken by the undertow. You had to be dragged out unconscious. Wake up now. You’ve ruined your dress.²²

H.D.

I was always ruining my dresses. And Ezra was always reciting poetry.

EZRA

“Rendez Vous.” A poem for Hilda Doolittle.

She hath some tree-born spirit of the wood

About her, and the wind is in her hair

Meseems he whisp’reth and awaiteth there

As if somewise he also understood.

The moss-grown kindly trees, meseems, she could

As kindred claim, for tho to some they wear

A harsh dumb semblance, unto us that care²³ –

H.D.

Truly dreadful poetry. But the sentiment was nice.

EZRA

There, Dryad, you are like a tree spirit, aren’t you? I wrote it for you. I’ve written a whole book for you. Hilda’s book. Do you like it? You should like it. I wrote it for you.

H.D.

There was a treehouse that my younger brother had built – bench boards and a sort of platform.²⁴

A young HILDA jumps up onto

the chair, which becomes the treehouse.

HILDA

From there, the house was hidden by great branches. Ezra’s kisses were electric, magnetic, they did not so much warm, they magnetized, vitalized.²⁵

HILDA turns toward EZRA as though

mid-embrace, then breaks away.

Look, Ezra, it’s the last trolley. Don’t miss the last train to Wyncote.²⁶ Come on –

EZRA

No, Dryad.²⁷

HILDA

He snatches me back. We sway with the wind. There is no wind. We sway with the stars. They are not far. We slide, slip, fly down through the branches, leap together to the ground. (Balances precariously and then leaps off the chair) No, I say, breaking from his arms. No, drawing back from his kisses. I’ll run ahead and stop the trolley, no – quick, get your things – books –whatever you left in the hall.

EZRA

(Running for the trolley) I’ll get them next time!

HILDA

Run. Run. He just catches the trolley, swaying dangerously, barely stopping, only half-stopping. Now I must face them in the house.

MR DOOLITTLE²⁸

He was late again.

HILDA

My father was winding the clock. My mother said –

MRS DOOLITTLE

Where were you? I was calling. Didn’t you hear me? Where is Ezra Pound?

HILDA

Oh, he’s gone.

MRS DOOLITTLE

But his books? Hat?

HILDA

He’ll get them next time. (To audience) Why had I ever come down out of that tree?²⁹

Hilda curls up in the chair

and writes a letter.

To Mr William Carlos Williams: Dearest Bill. It is important that I let you know that I have decided to dedicate my life and love to one who has been, beyond all others, torn and lonely – and ready to crucify himself yet more for the sake of helping all – I mean that I have promised to marry Ezra. I tell you because you are to me, Billy, nearer and dearer than many – than most.³⁰

H.D.

The next few months were much the same, Ezra’s kisses, Ezra’s books, Ezra. Filling up room, filling space. There was no air for studies at Bryn Mawr. I left in my second year, having done badly in mathematics – and English. I read the books that Ezra gave me: Swinburne, Ibsen, mystical yogi books. I watched the sky.

A faint projection of birds against a

Greek-blue sky appears.

HILDA

Do you see that bird, Mama? The Greeks made bird flight symbolic. I mean the Greeks said that this spelt this. The sort of way the wing went against the blue sky was, I suppose, a sort of pencil, a sort of stylus engraving, to the minds of the augurers, signs, symbols that meant things …³¹ hieroglyphics against the sky …

MRS DOOLITTLE

Hilda, you say such pretty, odd things. You ought to go on writing …

HILDA

Writing?

MRS DOOLITTLE

Those dear little stories you did …

HILDA

Oh, Mama, that’s not writing.³²

The birds turn into hieroglyphs

and then disappear.

H.D.

(To audience) Writing was something different, something, something else …

MRS DOOLITTLE

Someone at the door for you, Hilda. It’s Ezra Pound.

HILDA

My parents always said “Ezra Pound” and would never answer about him directly. They would say –

MRS DOOLITTLE

He is so eccentric. He is impossible; he told Professor Schelling that Bernard Shaw was more important than Shakespeare.

HILDA

Or –

MRS DOOLITTLE

He makes himself conspicuous; he wears those lurid, bright socks. The sophomores threw him in the pond. You can’t possibly marry him.

HILDA

Or –

MRS DOOLITTLE

He’s taking graduate courses now and will be an instructor of Romance languages. He’s very far away, dear.

HILDA

Or –

MRS DOOLITTLE

He’s lost his position at Wabash College. They’ve dismissed him. A scandal. A girl in his room –

HILDA

Was there a girl in your room, Ezra?

EZRA

Oh, yes. I found her in the snow, when I went to post a letter. She was stranded from a – from a travelling variety company. She had nowhere to go. I asked her to my room. She slept in my bed. I slept on the floor.³³ Anyway, they say in Wyncote I am bisexual and given to unnatural lust. You must come away with me, Dryad.³⁴

HILDA

But how could I? His father would scrape enough for him to live on in Europe. I had nothing.³⁵

OLD SCHOOL FRIEND

Anyway –

HILDA

An old school friend confided, as if to cheer me up.

OLD SCHOOL FRIEND

They say he was engaged to Mary Moore.³⁶ And Bessie Elliott³⁷ could have had him for the asking. There was Katherine Heyman,³⁸ before that.

H.D.

And so in 1908 Ezra sailed to Europe – with Mary Moore.³⁹

HILDA

It was dark without Ezra, very dark. A vacuum.

I have had enough.

I gasp for breath.

…

I have had enough –

border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,

herbs, sweet-cress.

…

For this beauty,

beauty without strength,

chokes out life.

I want wind to break,

scatter these pink-stalks,

snap off their spiced heads,

fling them about with dead leaves –

…

O to blot out this garden

to forget, to find a new beauty

in some terrible

wind-tortured place.⁴⁰

H.D.

The light, as I believe frequently happens in these circumstances, came from the most unexpected quarter. I had been invited by one of the usual hangers-over of tepid school friendships to an “afternoon.” There was nothing to be done about it. Too listless to actually rebel from middle-class society and too listless, at the particular moment, to frame an adequate excuse, I went.⁴¹

Projection of Greek statue

of a woman’s form.

HILDA

It was not that the girl, Frances,⁴² was beautiful, judged by the ordinary standards. She came into the room, stood stiff against the oak doors that closed heavily behind her. She was inordinately self-conscious. Perhaps she was shy. Her face was slightly spotted. Her colour was bad. The slate-grey raincoat did not do it justice. The grey veil was not altogether an inspiration. The girl, I thought, somehow or other felt this, was almost glad of this. It was her eyes, set in the unwholesome face; it was the shoulders, a marble splendour; it was her hand, small, unbending, stiff with archaic grandeur; it was her eyes.⁴³ I went to see her in an amateur play. She came to visit me at home. We read poetry and wrote letters. We kissed.

(To FRANCES) Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow;⁴⁴ thy way is long to the sun and the south. We were neither girls nor boys. Not girls or boys.

I, Hilda, tell you that I love you, Frances Gregg. Men and women will come and say I love you. I love you Hilda, you Frances. Men will say I love you Hilda but will anyone ever say I love you Frances as I say it?⁴⁵

H.D.

Then a letter from Ezra.

EZRA

I’m coming back to gawd’s own god damn country.⁴⁶

H.D.

Ezra wasn’t happy about Frances.

EZRA

You and that girl, a hundred years ago, would have been burned in Salem, for witches.⁴⁷

HILDA

We witches. Wee witches, we laughed and cast spells, invoking all the gods of Greece. We were very, very careful. Then one day, Frances was ill.

HILDA sinks to the floor and presses

her hands against FRANCES’s body.

A white Greek landscape appears

in the background.

I sank down to the floor, through the floor, above the earth, was on the earth, rock of earth-rock simply. Prophetess to prophetess on some Delphic headland. I pressed my cold hands against her eyelids.

FRANCES

Your hands are healing. They possess a dynamic white power.

HILDA

Sleep, sleep, my Itylus.

FRANCES

Tell me what Ezra Pound says about me. Tell me, Hilda.

Greek landscape fades.

HILDA

(Surprised) He says you are – he says you are –

FRANCES

He thinks I’m – I’m beautiful?

HILDA

Oh, he doesn’t exactly say it. He thinks you very striking.

H.D.

Frances lay passive, hypnotized by white hands.⁴⁸

FRANCES

He has kissed me too, Hilda. He loves me. I’m sure of it. And I love him. If I say I love Ezra, it isn’t the flimsy thing you call love. You loved him, if you loved him, superficially. You never saw the bright sort of aura that he wore, the poems he wrote for me. Perhaps you thought you loved him. I suffered, watching.

HILDA

One I love, two I love …⁴⁹

H.D.

Ezra went back to Europe and left us both with the same ugly pink carnations. And soon after, Frances, her mother, and I toured Europe as well. It was the summer of 1911. Frances’s mother didn’t like me, didn’t think me good for Frances. But then again my mother didn’t like Frances either.

MRS DOOLITTLE

This girl – she’s all wrong. People think her most – most unwholesome.⁵⁰

H.D.

When Frances and her mother went home, I stayed. I stayed in London. With Ezra.

Projection of British Museum

and area circa 1911.

(Thinks back, weighing her words) In London, people did not laugh at Ezra. People asked his opinion, a little reverently. It was funny watching people reverencing Ezra. He had done a book on Dante and Provence and Renaissance Latin poetry. Ezra in London. His clothes were not so odd here, his little brush of a beard and his velvet coat and his cravats like flowers in mosaic of maroon and green and gilt and odd vermilion. Ezra didn’t look odd though he looked more odd than ever. People seemed to understand, did not waste time commenting on his clothes. Said, “Ezra Pound, odd fellow … he has a flair for beauty.”⁵¹

HILDA

They were high times in London, on the literary scene. Symbolism, free verse, had taken us by storm. Ezra took me ’round:

EZRA

This is Miss Doolittle – they call her – she loves London.

BERTIE

O, I am so glad. Why do you love London?

EZRA

O let me really tell you, Bertie, that Miss Hilda Doolittle loves London.

BERTIE

Such a quaint person.

HILDA

Yes, I love London.⁵²

EZRA

You’re odd here; you’re a great success, but you don’t dress right.⁵³ You seem somehow more provincial than ever.⁵⁴

HILDA

Provincial?

EZRA

I said I don’t like that grey chiffon, it’s too nun-ish. Maybe all right for Philadelphia.

HILDA

Yes. No.

EZRA

Yes. No. Yes. Have you heard a word I’m saying?

HILDA

No. I mean yes.

EZRA

Yes, I mean no. What in Hell’s name do you mean?⁵⁵

HILDA

I mean, we’re not engaged, Ezra?

EZRA

Gawd forbid.⁵⁶

H.D.

But Ezra could be tender, thoughtful suddenly.

EZRA

Getting enough to eat, Dryad?

HILDA

O lots. Yes.

EZRA

I make a point of looking up old Mrs Towers once a week to find out.

HILDA

Yes, Ezra, she tells me when you drop in. She adores you.⁵⁷ Oh, excuse me, Lady Prescott –

EZRA

Don’t be so provincial, Dryad. Don’t let me hear you saying Lady Prescott that way again. It’s back-stairs. Everybody calls her Delia.⁵⁸

HILDA

Oh, excuse me, Delia –

H.D.

It was here apparently “smart” – as they called it – to be shabby.

DELIA

You have to be a duchess to dress like a fish-wife. It’s sheer crass outrage. Putting on airs. She’s making out her pedigree to be somewhat on the grand scale.

HILDA

How do you mean, Delia? But she’s shabby.

DELIA

I mean that people here can’t be shabby unless they’re great.⁵⁹

Projection replaced with salon

at BRIGIT’s house.

H.D.

There were parties. And there was poetry. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford. It was the war before the Great War – to free modern poetry from Romanticism, Victorianism – and adjectives. There were debates about metrical experiments, subjects from contemporary life, natural language. On these occasions, Ezra’s poetry may not have been the best, but he was certainly the loudest.

EZRA

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.

You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let’s to music!

I have no life save when the swords clash.

But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing

And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,

Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.⁶⁰

HILDA

Hands closed over Ezra’s mouth. A slim, elegant shape crowded into the divan between me and Ezra.

BRIGIT⁶¹

(Closing her hands over EZRA’s mouth) Ezra, darling.

HILDA

Ezra had removed the hands from his mouth and was gallantly, in his best Provençal manner, kissing them. Backs of small hands. Yes, Ezra did it nicely.

BRIGIT

So quaint of you, dearest, to read that poem.

EZRA

Why, princess, Brigit?

BRIGIT

Well, you told me, didn’t you, it was written for – moi?

EZRA

Did I? Maybe, but you see I tell everybody that.

BRIGIT

O, Ezra, shockingly inadequate. If you are being cutting, be cutting.

EZRA

I leave that for you, dearest Brigit.

HILDA

I slunk further into the corner of the divan. Who was this marooncoloured person who had stolen Ezra? Ezra was petting her, making himself charming.

EZRA

Brigit, if you don’t mind …

BRIGIT

What, dear Ezra?

EZRA

There’s someone in the corner, you’ve not noticed. Hilda.

BRIGIT

O yes. I have. I did notice. But is it grown up? Why do you ever let it come to parties?⁶² Listen, my dear, let me introduce you to someone – another enfant like yourself. (Beckoning someone in the distance) Richard – this is Hilda Doolittle, the American. Hilda, this is Richard Aldington.⁶³ He writes such beautiful poems, don’t you, darling? And what a gorgeous moustache. Come along, Ezra.

Projection fades. Spotlight.

HEYDT (VOICE)

Here, take this.

H.D.

(Startled) What is it?

HEYDT (VOICE)

Selections from the new German-English edition of Pound’s Cantos. Do you want it?

H.D.

(To audience) The face looked at me from the dark reflection of the paperback cover. I liked the feel of the cover. The face, full-face, bronze against the dark background, looked at me, a reflection in a metal mirror. (To HEYDT) No.

HEYDT (VOICE)

But this is about you. Eva Hesse says that Pound invented the Imagist title to explain the verses of the young poet – poetess – here – you.

H.D.

(Dryly) Yes. I read that somewhere before.⁶⁴

Lighting change.

(Pause) Was it 1912? Ezra, Brigit, Richard, a French critic named Flint, and I spent most every afternoon in tea shops, talking about poetry. We were all writing. Or trying to. Then one day, in the tea room of the British Museum, I gave four of my new poems to Ezra. I waited in silence while he read.

“Hermes of the Ways” is projected

on a screen overlaid on an image

of Greek shore.

The hard sand breaks,

and the grains of it

are clear as wine.

Far off over the leagues of it,

the wind,

playing on the wide shore,

piles little ridges,

and the great waves

break over it.⁶⁵

EZRA

But Dryad, this is poetry! (Approaches the screen and writes on the page) Cut this out, shorten this line. “Hermes of the Ways” is a good title. I’ll send this to Harriet Monroe⁶⁶ of Poetry. Have you a copy? Yes? Then we can send this, or I’ll type it when I get back. Will this do? (Scrawls H.D. Imagiste at the bottom of the page) H.D. Imagiste.⁶⁷

(To audience) Dear Harriet, I’ve had luck again, and am sending you some modern stuff by an American. It is objective – no slither; direct – no excessive use of adjectives, no metaphors that won’t permit examination. It’s straight talk, straight as the Greek!⁶⁸

The poem fades.

HILDA

Then a letter from Frances.

FRANCES

I will be married when you get this. A person, a professor, Louis Umfreville Wilkinson,⁶⁹ not one of your little poets. I’ll write you when we get to London. We will be honeymooning from there in Belgium and we want you to come with us. PS: Perhaps one day wee witches will grow up.⁷⁰

HILDA

Did I decide not to go? No. Ezra decided.⁷¹ I went to the station as arranged with bags and baggage and found Ezra had waited, seen me, seen the things coming through, countermanded the order, bought the ticket back from Frances’s husband. Could I see Frances after this? Frances’s last word had been with an odd theatrical little lift of brows “O I hadn’t realized it had gone so far with Ezra Pound.” The husband was all suavity, but I saw, they let me see, what they thought.

EZRA

Her mother cabled –

HILDA

He had made that up and other things but shame burnt across me. I don’t think I can stay now in London. Everything looks different and my room’s changed. I mean it used to be full of light, rose colours, all your letters. (To audience) If I go across to Paris will you write me?

Will you, Richard?⁷²

Images of Paris appear on the

screen. Parisian music from

the twenties plays over the speakers.

HILDA

Richard got a job, came over. Paris suddenly became (with the coming of Richard) Paris. Space existed as space, Paris as Paris.⁷³ Paris was all symbolism and cubism. I began writing free verse at length.

Music and Paris images fade.

While in Paris I visited Margaret Cravens, the American pianist Ezra had introduced me to in London.⁷⁴ Margaret had everything. It was quite something to have everything. Margaret was very kind.

Projection of MARGARET’s elegant

home interior, including piano

and painting of EZRA.

HILDA

Thank you so much, Margaret, yes I do like lemon. Yes, in England everyone has milk, never lemon. They say, “Lemon is so Russian.”

MARGARET

You see, I seem to know you, knowing people that you do.

HILDA

Yes. Yes. What people?

MARGARET

Well, there’s Ezra Pound.

HILDA

O, of course, Ezra Pound.

H.D.

Did this Margaret love Ezra? Ezra kept coming up, coming back.

MARGARET

(Gesturing to painting on the wall) That’s a portrait of him.

HILDA

O yes, I saw it when I came in.

MARGARET

I told Ezra I’d keep it here though it’s really his, belongs to him.

HILDA

O yes.

MARGARET

And what really is the girl like he’s engaged to? This Dorothy Shakespear.⁷⁵

HILDA

Engaged to? But I didn’t know he was engaged.

H.D.

(To audience) I had been under the vague half-impression that it was I who was vaguely half-engaged to Ezra Pound.

MARGARET

O, but I thought he’d told you.

HILDA

O no, never.

MARGARET

But how terrible of me. He wrote me in the strictest confidence.

HILDA

O, Ezra didn’t exactly tell me but he hinted.

MARGARET

Well, I thought it odd. He said, always said, that he was your nearest relative –

HILDA

(Quoting EZRA) “Male relative. Nearest male relative.”⁷⁶

H.D.

With Richard there, I was no longer in the same catalogue as “poor Margaret” as they called her. Margaret herself being a little vague, lost, talking on and off in bright spurts about Pater,⁷⁷ about Landor,⁷⁸ and other writers. Talking of the pianist Walter Rummel.⁷⁹ Richard finding Margaret clever, sparks flying. Ezra making a little mew-call from the divan in the corner.

EZRA

Ain’t you ever, Dryad, going to speak to me again properly?

HILDA

I can’t see that I, Ezra, haven’t.

EZRA

What’s the matter? Why so standoffish, Dryad?

H.D.

(Confidentially, to audience) In light of Richard’s arrival, I could afford to sting out at him.

HILDA

Don’t you think, Ezra, it was a little, just a little odd –

EZRA

Odd, Dryad?

HILDA

I mean if you were engaged to Dorothy Shakespear all that time to – to – kiss me.

EZRA

The odd thing is not to kiss you, Dryad.

HILDA

No. I don’t like it –

EZRA

Listen, Dryad, darling.

HILDA

O Ezra, you might – you might have told me –

EZRA

Dryad, developing a puritan conscience –

HILDA

No. No, that isn’t the argument. It doesn’t – seem – right –

EZRA

Well, Dryad, as I never see my, ah – fiancée save when surrounded by layers of its mother, by its family portraits, by its own inhibitions, by the especial curve of the spiral of the social scale it belongs to, I think you might be – affable.

HILDA

Would you be affable if I were engaged to – to – Richard?

EZRA

Are you?

HILDA

I didn’t say I was or wasn’t. Would you?

H.D.

But Ezra’s only answer was to draw me toward him, behind Margaret’s baby grand with its baby-grand manner scowling its disapproval.⁸⁰

HILDA

(Pulling away) Don’t rumple and ruffle my dress.

EZRA

Since when, Dryad, have you begun to worry about dresses?

HILDA

Since this minute.

RICHARD

Margaret …

HILDA

… said Richard, from the other side of the room.

RICHARD

We never ask you to play for us –

EZRA

Gawd, don’t ask her –

HILDA

Margaret looked up, an odd twist to her fine straight eyebrows. A white flame of pain crossed her eyes, dark eyes, wide apart staring like a crystal gazer’s. Why had Ezra said that? Was he being rude simply? But now his rudeness seemed insanity, seemed blatant cruelty. His rudeness, his casual approach to both of us, for I was sure he had kissed, had long been kissing Margaret. Wide flame of pain in the almond eyes of Margaret, flashed, went, and the almond eyes of Margaret were just odd almond eyes with a little glow of passion.

MARGARET

O, Ezra is like that. He thinks I play so badly.

RICHARD

O – but you don’t – I’m sure you don’t. I know you do play nicely.

HILDA

It was Richard. For a moment, pain was swept away and I loved Richard. Richard who was making me write again, who was bringing Margaret’s almond eyes back to their normal level of just rather odd blank kindness.⁸¹

Lights fade followed by the projected

images of artworks from the Louvre,

including the Venus de Milo.

RICHARD

Hilda, darling, if I don’t marry you someone else will.

HILDA

Marry me?

RICHARD

Hadn’t you thought about it? Isn’t it what we’ve been thinking of all the time?⁸²

HILDA

Ezra says I should marry you.⁸³

RICHARD

Well, Ezra is a genius when he isn’t a damn fool. Now that we are here at the Louvre, what is it you propose to see? Look at all these American tourists … And what is that girl doing in front of the Venus de Milo?

HILDA

Richard laughed but here, in the flow of visitors, I hardly dared let go of realities. I dared not follow the curve of the white belly and short space before the breasts brought the curve to a sudden shadow.⁸⁴

RICHARD

Look, it’s almost four o’clock. Shall we have tea, darling?

HILDA

What? Oh. No. I said I was going to visit Margaret. She invited me for tea today. I had better run.

The museum images are replaced

by the elegant façade of MARGARET’s

Paris house.

HILDA

Miss Cravens, please.

MAID

Mademoiselle est morte.⁸⁵

HILDA

The maid said this simply. She made no gesture of apology. Something was lacking. People didn’t say in French, Mademoiselle is dead. They didn’t say in English, Miss est morte. Mademoiselle est morte. That is what she said. Was it possible I had mistaken it? Was she saying. Mademoiselle is out, or had I forgotten my French, did morte mean asleep or gone away to the country? But Mademoiselle asked me here for tea. It is Sunday? She asked me to come Sunday. What, what did Mademoiselle die of?⁸⁶

H.D.

The letter made it all clear. She was obsessed with the idea of some white afterlife, words like that. Some said she died of love, simply.⁸⁷

Projection of the Pont Saint-Louis.

HILDA

(Standing) Walking with Ezra by the Seine. We stood close together on a bridge near the Île Saint-Louis. I drew close to him. None of us left him alone – Ezra was carrying his ebony stick. He waved it toward the river, the chestnut blossoms, seemed to wave it, at all his friends and himself.

EZRA

(Slumping) And the morning stars sang together in glory⁸⁸ –

Projection fades. HILDA sits.

H.D.

Something about Margaret’s death helped me make a decision about Richard. We travelled Italy: Venice, Capri, Verona.

An image of the Hermaphrodite

appears on the screen.

In Rome, we saw a statue of the Hermaphrodite.⁸⁹ The gentle breathing image, modelled in strange, soft, honey-coloured stone.⁹⁰ Not a girl or boy.

OFFICIAL

(Standing) Do you, Hilda, take Richard to be your loving husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, as long as you both shall live?⁹¹

HILDA

(Pause) I do.

HILDA sits, as though stunned.

The image fades.

H.D.

Richard and I stayed in London. We had one perfect year. Then there was a war. A cloud.⁹² A baby – a daughter – born dead. A breakdown.

NURSE

You know, dearie, you must not have another baby until after the war is over. You’d best keep your husband away from you.⁹³

H.D.

And there were the raids –

HILDA slides off the chair and onto

the floor beside RICHARD.

HILDA

Read Browning⁹⁴ to me, Richard.

RICHARD

What just do you want, dear, and the room’s too dark; can’t turn on the electricity ’til the raid’s over.

HILDA

Read anything – your voice – it was always your voice – sometimes in the worst times, I hear your voice.

RICHARD

(Putting his arm around HILDA) Do keep still. Don’t fidget. Now rest there. What shall I read, darling?

HILDA

(Lying against RICHARD) That thing by Browning about Fortù – Fortù was it? The Englishman in Italy, you know what I mean. It takes me back to our travels in Sorrento, to Anacapri. It makes things come right. I know the baby – our baby – I know all that …

RICHARD

Hush, hush, darling.

Sound of the blasts.

HILDA

Another gun – perhaps we’ll go this time – read Fortù.

RICHARD

Fortù, Fortù, my beloved one, / Sit here by my side.⁹⁵

Blast.

HILDA

Go on, go on reading, don’t let anything stop you. Go on. It will make things come right. Go on reading. Don’t let anything stop you. They only broke all the upstairs windows last time … They may do better this time …⁹⁶

HILDA scuttles backward onto the

chair, terrified by the bombs.

H.D.

(Recovering from the memory) Richard enlisted in 1916.⁹⁷ Brigit Patmore began visiting our flat in Mecklenburgh Square.⁹⁸

HILDA

The war turned things. On leave, Richard’s moods were more violent. The stranger became singularly strange, his language, his voice, the thing he brought into the room.⁹⁹ Even now his “I won’t come back from the front, you might allow me a little fun” was someone else speaking.¹⁰⁰

(To BRIGIT) O, do stay here, Brigit. It’s too late. There will be raids tonight and you won’t want to be outside. Stay here in the big room with us.

BRIGIT

How wonderful. How beautiful.

HILDA

Richard went on undressing. Brigit didn’t want a nightdress. She pulled off the mauve and old gold and she was gold and mauve underneath.

BRIGIT

I don’t take up much room.

HILDA

Richard out of delicacy seemed to have removed bits only, rolled in his great coat. He was simply “rolling in” as people did nowadays. People didn’t sleep, pulled off bits of things and I pulled off bits of things. Richard seemed to be asleep.

(To RICHARD and BRIGIT) Who’ll blow out the last candle? But it must be almost day … Goodnight.

Silence. Spotlight.

As in a dream, I could hear them on the other side of the room, but why wake? Brigit was a slut, a little fox-coloured wench out of some restoration comedy. I had always known. Brigit was like that. Sleep with my arm above my head and listen if I want, for what I hear is nothing, a sort of sweep of swallow wings. But it had been a moment, a dream, a yellow lotus of forgetfulness …¹⁰¹

I was not indifferent when I strayed aside

or loitered as we three went,

or seemed to turn a moment from the path

for that same amaranth.

I was not dull and dead when I fell

back on our couch at night.

I was not indifferent though I turned

and lay quiet.

I was not dead in my sleep.¹⁰²

H.D.

Richard went back to his regiment in France … and then on leave … to France … another leave. Arabella Yorke,¹⁰³ a young American, moved into our upstairs room. I never thought they would “carry on” to the extent that they did.

RICHARD

Listen, it’s perfectly clear. I love you. I desire the other.¹⁰⁴ We both believe in one love and many lovers. Darling, it won’t change us.

A Greek landscape is projected

in the background with an androgynous

figure gradually revealed to be

a young woman.

HILDA

Ah, love is bitter and sweet,

but which is more sweet,

the sweetness

or the bitterness?

none has spoken it.¹⁰⁵

…

Let him go forth radiant,

let life rise in his young breast,

life is radiant,

life is made for beautiful love

and strange ecstasy,

strait, searing body and limbs,

tearing limbs and body from life;

life is his if he ask,

life is his if he take it,

then let him take beauty

as his right.¹⁰⁶

…

Love is bitter,

but can salt taint sea-flowers,

grief, happiness?

Is it bitter to give back

love to your lover

if he crave it?

Is it bitter to give back

love to your lover

if he wish it

for a new favourite?

who can say,

or is it sweet?

Is it sweet

to possess utterly,

or is it bitter,

bitter as ash?¹⁰⁷

ACT II

H.D. sits C.S., waiting for another

session with HEYDT to begin.

HEYDT (VOICE)

Mrs Aldington, a pleasure to see you again. You continue to keep your journal?

H.D.

Yes.

HEYDT (VOICE)

Very good. Now, where did we leave off?

H.D.

(To audience) He pretends to disregard the “classic” Freudian technique but he is always eager for gossip of those very far-off days and people.¹⁰⁸

HEYDT (VOICE)

(Sound of shuffling pages, as though reviewing notes) Ah yes, we were speaking of D.H. Lawrence.¹⁰⁹

H.D.

Lorenzo, we called him.

HEYDT (VOICE)

Lorenzo, yes. Continue, please.

H.D.

(Looking away) What can I tell you? …

HILDA

(Eagerly, to audience) Richard and I met D.H. Lawrence during the first days of the war in a fabulous suite of rooms overlooking Green Park on Piccadilly. They discussed him before he came in to the party.

ENGLISH MAN

I heard the old chap is tubercular.¹¹⁰

DELIA

He ran away with someone’s wife, a baroness, wasn’t it?¹¹¹

AMERICAN MAN

His novel is already being spoken of as oversexed, sex-mania, they say. A damn shame if they suppress it!¹¹²

HILDA

Then the little man came in, looking slender and frail in evening dress. His wife, Frieda,¹¹³ was elegant, poured into a black gown. Her hair was like wheat.¹¹⁴

RICHARD

What’s this?

HILDA

(Startled out of the memory) That? (To audience) I was waiting for Richard to say something in keeping with the whole mad show of his affair. He should say, “Arabella is waiting for me upstairs. Arabella is a star performer. Arabella understands these things. I’m going up to Arabella.”

RICHARD

(Interrupting) Old Lawrence. What is damn old Lorenzo writing to you?

HILDA

Read it –

RICHARD

(Reading letter aloud) Dear Hilda – There is no use trying to believe that all this war really exists. It really doesn’t matter. We must go on. I know that Richard will come back. In your “Eurydice” poem, your frozen altars mean something, but I don’t like the second half of the Orpheus sequence … It’s your part to be a woman, the woman vibrations, Eurydice should be enough. You can’t deal with both. If you go on –

RICHARD

Go on, what? What’s this poem that you’ve been writing for Old Lorenzo?

HILDA

I wasn’t writing it for Lorenzo. (To audience) But I had, I was; it was Lawrence’s pale face and the archaic Greek beard and the fire-blue eyes in the burnt-out face that I had seen, an Orpheus head.¹¹⁵

(To Richard) … Well, you’re upstairs so much of the time –

RICHARD

What did you expect when you so sweetly refuse me and give us carte blanche?

HILDA

I don’t in the least know what I expected –

RICHARD

I should think you didn’t. It’s obvious that you only wanted to get me out of the way –

HILDA

Out of the way?

RICHARD

One can’t be expected to believe in the entire altruism of your scheme.

HILDA

Scheme?

RICHARD

Obvious –

HILDA

You’re quite wrong –

RICHARD

Wrong? In the end –

HILDA

The end! (To audience) If he said anything now, I would tear at his throat. My hands were thin, were fine, but if they met on his bull throat …

RICHARD

Darling –

HILDA

(To audience) Why did he say that?

RICHARD

What’s come over us?

HILDA

I didn’t know. Couldn’t say. But I was so tired and the coal had entirely given out. Looking at each other like two peasants in a Tolstoy novel. Life is Russian. Life is damn bad art.¹¹⁶

H.D.

By 1917 there were more rumours about the Lawrences.

LANDLADY

They left their light on and were singing German songs during a raid, like. The wife is German, right? Spies, the police think. Gave ’em three days to clear out.¹¹⁷

LAWRENCE

It’s your fault, you damn Prussian!¹¹⁸

H.D.

And then after dinner, when Lawrence had burnt himself out.

LAWRENCE

Frieda is there. Hilda, you are here. Frieda is there at my right hand. You are here. You are there for all eternity, our love is written in blood.

HILDA

But whose love? His and Frieda’s? No – that was taken for granted. It was to be a perfect triangle.¹¹⁹

The next day, everyone was out. Lawrence was writing. That seemed to be all that mattered. Now was the moment to answer his amazing proposal of last night, his “for all eternity.” I put out my hand. My hand touched his sleeve. He shivered, he seemed to move back, move away, like a hurt animal.¹²⁰ Frieda said when we were alone –

FRIEDA

But Lawrence does not really care for women. He only cares for men. Hilda, you have no idea what he is like.¹²¹

HILDA

A party. What a party. Lawrence, Frieda, Richard, Arabella, and Cecil Gray,¹²² a young composer, a favourite of Frieda’s. Lawrence saying –

LAWRENCE

(Directing) We’ll do a Biblical charade; you be the tree of life, Hilda.

HILDA

Adam and Eve were Richard and Arabella, of course. Cecil Gray was the angel at the gate. It was the end of madness. It was the beginning. Gray was the angel, a joke with an umbrella.

Bright light illuminates the stage.

Projected shadow figures represent

the dancers.

LAWRENCE

Take your umbrella! Cecil, you be the angel with the flaming sword – it will be our best Bible ballet yet! Dance! You dance!

HILDA

But I’m the tree, or what am I?

LAWRENCE

You are the apple tree – you dance. Now Adam and Eve, you come along here, and Frieda, you be the serpent, you growl and writhe.

FRIEDA

Serpents don’t growl.

LAWRENCE

(To audience) You be the audience, you be the chorus of the damned. Good. Come on, Eve – excellent, Arabella. Come along, Richard.

RICHARD

What are you? What’s left for you? Oh, I see, Old Lorenzo, of course, is Gawd-a’-mightly.

LAWRENCE

Women, I say unto thee … The tree has got to dance, dance, hand them the apples. More, more, more – enough!¹²³

Blackout. Spotlight S.L.

CECIL

Come on, Person.

HILDA

Cecil Gray grabbed my hand and we made our way out onto the landing, out of the madness …

Lights up.

H.D.

(From chair) Even when I had run away to Cornwall with Cecil Gray, Richard continued to write from the front:

RICHARD

(Kneeling) O my dear Dooley, I would so like to be like your Cecil Gray – witty, contemptuous of “ordinary” people – how I envy Gray his contempt – but there are too many dead men, too much misery. I am choked and stifled not so much by my own misery as by the unending misery of all these thousands. Who shall make amends for it? Dooley, I have made a great mess of my life. But I would have been content if I hadn’t made you suffer so much. And then, and then, I must look after Arabella. I find it hard to write to her. Twice last week I tried to get killed and was unlucky or lucky, whichever you like. Isn’t this folly? Do be happy with Cecil. I shall get over this someday.¹²⁴

HILDA

When I told him I was pregnant, Cecil said he would “look after me,” but I ran away. I couldn’t sit night after night … We would have had a pretty house and the romantic scandal all patched up, poetical, and his family so wealthy … I couldn’t have stood it.¹²⁵

H.D.

One day, a girl came to visit me. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-four.

BRYHER¹²⁶

Oh, Mrs Aldington, I hope you don’t mind, I got your address from Mrs Shorter. I am Bryher Ellerman. And – I – I must tell you I think you are the greatest poet ever. I’ve read all your poems. And memorized your first book, Sea Garden¹²⁷ –

I saw the first pear

as it fell –

the honey-seeking, golden-banded,

the yellow swarm

was not more fleet than I,

(spare us from loveliness)

and I fell prostrate

crying;

you have flayed us

with your blossoms,

spare us the beauty

of fruit trees.

The honey-seeking

paused not, the air thundered their song,

and I alone was prostrate.

O rough-hewn

god of the orchard¹²⁸ –

Well, you know your own poems, don’t you? I don’t mean to say that you don’t. It’s just they mean so much to me. Sometimes, life is so bleak, I – well, I don’t think I can stand it anymore, but then there are your poems, you see –

HILDA

The girl, the heiress actually, came to visit me every day. One day, when I was ill, the landlady accosted her outside my room.

LANDLADY

Who’s going to pay for the funeral, eh? Mrs Aldington’s got the Spanish influenza, like. Be surprised if she made it through the night.

BRYHER

Wake up, wake up, Mrs Aldington. Hilda. You’re going to be fine. I’ve hired a nurse.¹²⁹ Please wake up. You’ve survived double pneumonia. Shall I read you some of your poetry? Please wake up, without you there’s really not much to live for, you see.

H.D.

Near the birth of my baby in 1919, Ezra hurtled himself into the decorous St Faith’s Nursing Home.¹³⁰ Beard, black soft hat, ebony stick – something unbelievably operatic – directoire overcoat, Verdi. He stalked and stamped the length of the room. He coughed, choked, or laughed.¹³¹

EZRA

You look like old Mrs Grumpy, in Wyncote.¹³² It’s that black lace cap.

HILDA

It was true – I looked no sylph.¹³³

EZRA

But Dryad, in all this mess – my only real criticism is that it is not my child.¹³⁴

HILDA

Lawrence came to visit but said very little. Richard, still strange, shell-shocked from the war, first agreed to accept the baby and then changed his mind.¹³⁵

RICHARD

You go at once and register that child as Gray’s.¹³⁶ Of course you know if you make a false statement it’s perjury – and five years’ penal servitude.¹³⁷

H.D.

I registered the child as Frances Perdita Aldington. Perdita. Aldington because it was my name and I had every right. Perdita for the child I lost who had come back to me in the shape of this new one. Frances, my dear friend. Frances for the love I might find again.

HILDA

I want to tell you, Bryher.

BRYHER

Yes.

HILDA

I want to make a bargain with you. If you promise never again to say that you will kill yourself, I’m going to give you something.

BRYHER

Yes?

HILDA

If you promise that you won’t smuggle in any more of those frightful and dangerous … things … I want to tell you something. The little girl is not my husband’s little girl … do you understand these things?

BRYHER

I hate your Richard Aldington. I am so glad.

H.D.

I want you to promise me to grow up and take care of the little girl.

BRYHER

Do you mean – do you mean –

HILDA

A light is shining at the far end of a long, long tunnel.

BRYHER

Do you mean … for my own … exactly like a puppy?

HILDA

Exactly … like a puppy.¹³⁸

H.D.

When I was well, we made sure Perdita was well cared for and Bryher and I travelled to Greece.

Travel was difficult, the country itself in a state of political upheaval; chance hotel acquaintances expressed surprise that two women alone had been allowed to come at all at that time. We were always “two women alone” or “two ladies alone,” but we were not alone.¹³⁹

One day, when we were at our hotel in Corfu, I saw a dim shape forming on the wall of our room. It was later afternoon; the wall was a dull, matte ochre.¹⁴⁰

Greek landscape fills the room

followed by gyrations of light and

sound resembling the “aura” phase

of migraine. Bright telescopic pictures

of an airman’s head, cup, and tripod

appear among the flashes of light.

HILDA

Bryher – Bryher – I am seeing pictures – I thought they were shadows at first, but they are light, not shadow. They are quite simple objects –

BRYHER

Are you seeing things? Is it the heat?

HILDA

No – it’s quite clear. There is a head and shoulders, three-quarter face, no marked features, a stencil of a soldier or airman … Now there is a … cup, actually suggesting the mythic chalice … But of course it’s very strange. I can break away from them now, if I want – it’s just a matter of concentrating … The third is a circle or two circles, the base the larger of the two; it is joined by three lines … the tripod of classic Delphi. Should I stop?¹⁴¹

BRYHER

No – it’s wonderful. Go on.

Images fade after a burst of light

and Greek symbols. They are replaced

by images of BRYHER and H.D. in Borderline.¹⁴²

H.D.

We travelled Europe and Egypt. Bryher took husbands to gain independence from her parents.¹⁴³ In public, she and I were “cousins.” We were neither women nor men. I published novels and poetry. We made experimental films. Fourteen years passed that way …

In 1933, Bryher arranged for my sessions with Freud in Vienna. It was clear another war was coming. I needed to prepare myself.

Projection of FREUD’s library in

Vienna, with an emphasis on books

and statues of mythic figures.

FREUD

Won’t you recline, Mrs Aldington? Now, if you don’t mind my telling you, I see you are going to be difficult. Now, although it is against the rules, I will tell you something: you were disappointed and you are disappointed in me.¹⁴⁴

HILDA

In truth, I may have been disappointed he was not taller. I always imagined Freud was a giant but I was taller than he was.¹⁴⁵

Projection fades.

H.D.

Friends at home were not altogether impressed that I was seeing the Professor. Ezra wrote:

EZRA

You got into the wrong pigsty, ma chère. But not too late to climb out.¹⁴⁶

H.D.

But with the Professor I could share the visions that had been haunting me.

Images from the scene in Greece

reappear, flashing against the

projection of FREUD’s library.

FREUD

These pictures you saw on the wall, the picture writing – the tripod and the head of the airman. A desire for union with your mother, yes? You were physically in Greece. In Hellas. Your mother’s name was Helen. You had come home to the glory that was Greece.¹⁴⁷

HILDA

(Distracted, playing with a light-projected Greek symbol that has landed in her hands) Perhaps.

The symbol flits from H.D.’s hands.

It briefly turns into a swastika before

disappearing from the upper corner S.R.

H.D.

Yet already in Vienna, the shadows were lengthening. There were, for instance, occasional coquettish, confetti-like showers from the air, gilded paper swastikas and narrow strips of printed paper like the ones we pulled out of our Christmas bonbons … The party had begun, or this was preliminary to the birthday or the wedding.

Coloured paper falls from the sky.

HILDA

I stooped to scrape up a handful of these confetti-like tokens as I was leaving the Hotel Regina one morning. (Picks up papers, unfolds and reads from the first) “Hitler gives bread.” (Unfolds and reads from the second) “Hitler gives work” … The paper was crisp and clean … The gold, however, would not stay bright, nor the paper crisp, very long.¹⁴⁸

HILDA allows pieces of paper to flutter

to the ground and watches them fall.

H.D.

(Sitting) I left Vienna for London before the war started. In 1942, my friend Frances was killed, exploded with her mother and daughter in the Plymouth Blitz.¹⁴⁹

In the end, it was Ezra who got into the wrong pigsty, making pro-Mussolini radio broadcasts for the fascists in Rome.¹⁵⁰ My sessions with Freud did not prepare me for this war. I was not strong enough.¹⁵¹

HILDA

Read Browning to me, Richard. Read anything – your voice – it was always your voice – sometimes in the worst times, I hear your voice.

BRYHER

Hilda, Hilda, it’s Bryher. You’re hallucinating.

HILDA

That thing by Browning about Fortù – Fortù was it? The Englishman in Italy, you know what I mean. It takes me back to our travels in Sorrento, to Anacapri. It makes things come right. I know the baby – our baby – I know all that … Another gun … And I wrote …

Projected montage/collage of

previously projected images,

war footage, soundscape of voices

and Second World War radio, bombing.

pressure on heart, lungs, the brain

about to burst its brittle case

(what the skull can endure!)

over us, Apocryphal fire,

under us, the earth sway, dip of a floor,

slope of a pavement

where men roll, drunk

with a new bewilderment,

sorcery, bedevilment:

the bone-frame was made for

no such shock knit within terror,

yet the skeleton stood up to it:

the flesh? it was melted away,

the heart burnt out, dead ember,

tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered,

yet the frame held:

we passed the flame: we wonder

what saved us? what for?¹⁵²

Images and sound end abruptly. Silence.

H.D.

(Looking into space) After the war, Ezra was arrested for high treason. They locked him up in a cage at Pisa.¹⁵³ The prison actually of the Self was dramatized or materialized for our generation by Ezra’s incarceration.¹⁵⁴ He composed his Pisan cantos – his best work – locked up in that cage.

Projections and landscape suggest

the Pisan landscape, shadowed cage.

EZRA

(In cage at Pisa)

With clouds over Taishan-Chocorua

when the blackberry ripens

and now the new moon faces Taishan

one must count by the dawn star

Dryad, thy peace is like water

There is September sun on the pools¹⁵⁵

H.D.

(Pause) Perhaps there was always a challenge in his creative power. Perhaps … there was unconscious – really unconscious – rivalry … It all began with the Greek fragments – and living in seclusion I finished … a very long epic sequence, my “Cantos.”¹⁵⁶

During the recitation, there is

an atemporal, palimpsestic layering

of war scenes, ranging from Greek battle

to the Second World War to more

contemporary conflict.

HILDA

I say there is only one image,

one picture, though the swords flash;

I say there is one treasure,

one desire as the wheels turn

and the hooves of the stallions

thunder across the plain,

and the plain is dust,

and the battle-field is a heap

of rusty staves and broken chariot-frames

and the rims of the dented shields

and desolation, destruction – for what?¹⁵⁷

H.D.

There is a photograph of Ezra as he left the Pisan camp, fettered, between two detectives.¹⁵⁸ When tried, he was judged insane¹⁵⁹ and sentenced to St Elizabeth’s mental hospital.¹⁶⁰ (Pulling photograph from her pants pocket) I look at Ezra’s picture; this is an old man, they say. It is only by admitting that Ezra is an old man that I can say that I am an old woman. But this is not true. There are others. They go on painting pictures or they go on writing poetry.¹⁶¹ They go on …

H.D. rises, with difficulty, from her

chair and makes her way S.R.

(Looking back over her shoulder and then at audience) Though, sometimes, I do wonder … why I ever came down out of that tree.¹⁶²