Sunday/Doolittle

In “Ancient Wisdom Speaks to the Mountain”, the speaker muses on stillness – the suspension of a moment into an image – which reflects back on Hilda Doolittle’s poetic technique itself. Here, the process of capturing her subject is endless, rather than static or photographic. The mountain, the viewer, the reader, the passage of time – all are incorporated into a scene that flows through the poem’s lines and gradually disintegrates any sense of difference between stillness in space and the notion of being “still” in a continuous state of being. The mountain transforms into “a picture of a mountain”, that is “frozen” both in water and time, while nature around it revolves through its cycle of seasons. The title refers to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, weaving and war; who is being addressed, however, is deliberately unclear, shifting between “she” and “you”, so that the reader becomes part of the poem’s meditative process. Indeed, “Ancient Wisdom” reads as an exercise in mindfulness – the deliberate absorption of oneself into the surroundings, in an attempt to “start awake” with full sensory and spiritual awareness. (tls)

Ancient Wisdom Speaks to the Mountain


I.


Where you are,
your clock is blue as the robes
the priests of Tibet wear:


where you are,
you stare and stare at a mountain
and a picture of a mountain in the water:


and when the river is half frozen over,
still you stand
snow on your sleeve and hood:


still you stand waiting,
not forgetting;
where were we now


if you had not said over and over,
as you watched the snow
slide down the runnels


and become, below on the slopes,
blossom of apple, quince and the wild-pear,
repeatedly, this prayer:


remember these (you said)
who when the earthquake shook their city,
when angry blast and fire


broke open their frail door
did not forget
beauty.


II.


O—what a picture of a mountain!
in our desolation,
four times, four seasons


marched up from the valley,
each with its retinue and panoply,
each climbed the mountain slowly:


though the mountain changed its colour
as the seasons came and went,
she did not alter.


III.


Her cloak is very old
yet blue as the blue-poppy,
blue as the flax in flower:


and not an hour passed
in our torment
but she thought of us:


she did not change,
the mountain changed from gold to violet,
as the sun rose and set:


she knew our fear,
and yet she did not falter
nor cast herself in anguish by the river:


but she stood,
the sun on her hair
or the snow on her blue hood:


winter and summer,
summer and winter
. . . again . . . again . . .


never forgetting
but remembering
our peculiar desolation:


I will stand here, she said to the mountain,
that even you must start awake, aware
that beauty can endure:


her cloak is very, very old
and blue . . .
H. D. (1943)