H. D.

We have a blizzard coming and I was googling "storm" and "blizzard" poetry.  From a list of poetry themes, "prison" caught my eye.  I read: 

Prisoners                                            

H..    D.

H. D., 1886 - 1961

It is strange that I should want
this sight of your face—
we have had so much:
at any moment now I may pass,
stand near the gate,
do not speak—
only reach if you can, your face
half-fronting the passage
toward the light.

Fate—God sends this as a mark,
a last token that we are not forgot,
lost in this turmoil,
about to be crushed out,
burned or stamped out
at best with sudden death.

The spearsman who brings this
will ask for the gold clasp
you wear under your coat.
I gave all I had left.

Press close to the portal,
my gate will soon clang
and your fellow wretches
will crowd to the entrance—
be first at the gate.

Ah beloved, do not speak.
I write this in great haste—
do not speak,
you may yet be released.
I am glad enough to depart
though I have never tasted life
as in these last weeks.

It is a strange life,
patterned in fire and letters
on the prison pavement.
If I glance up
it is written on the walls,
it is cut on the floor,
it is patterned across
the slope of the roof.

I am weak—weak—
last night if the guard
had left the gate unlocked
I could not have ventured to escape,
but one thought serves me now
with strength.

As I pass down the corridor
past desperate faces at each cell,
your eyes and my eyes may meet.

You will be dark, unkempt,
but I pray for one glimpse of your face—
why do I want this?
I who have seen you at the banquet
each flower of your hyacinth-circlet
white against your hair.

Why do I want this,
when even last night
you startled me from sleep?
You stood against the dark rock,
you grasped an elder staff.

So many nights
you have distracted me from terror.
Once you lifted a spear-flower.
I remember how you stooped
to gather it—
and it flamed, the leaf and shoot
and the threads, yellow, yellow—
sheer till they burnt
to red-purple in the cup.

As I pass your cell-door
do not speak.
I was first on the list—
They may forget you tried to shield me
as the horsemen passed.

Curious, isn't it?  The author is H.D. I googled H.D. and found Hilda Doolittle.  I read about her crazy, mixed up life but I couldn't find any reference that would tie her to prison, or any person close to her, that would be in prison.  

She lived through two wars which affected her terribly.  Her husband, the poet Richard Addington, came home from the war with PTSD.  Just before the war, H.D. miscarried and she blamed the hype preceding the war. She was bisexual and had many lovers.  She was engaged to Ezra Pound, twice, and it may be he whom she imagined in Prisoners because he supported Hitler and Mussolini and was in prison as a traitor, after the war.  Who knows?  H. D. even underwent psychoanalysis with Freud.  Spiritualism became an overriding interest near the end of her life, communicating with the dead.    She died from the effects of a stroke in 1961.

I have so many questions.  H.D. had another daughter by the artist, Cecil Grey.  Her name was Frances Perdita Addington while she was still married to Addington.  I googled Frances Perdita Addington and found out that she was adopted by the Macphersons who befriended H.D. In fact, the three of them raised Perdita.  They all lived together, more or less, since they were "jet setters", so to speak. It was quite a childhood.  Everyone was a writer and all their friends were writers.  Perdita was homeschooled and learned to speak German, French, Italian, and English. She worked as a translator during WWII.  In fact, she worked as a code breaker on the Enigma.  

Once visiting the United States she had such a good time, she stayed.  Eventually, she married John Valentine Schaffner and had four children. Unlike her mother, she stayed married and led a stable life.  

Fate—God sends this as a mark,

a last token that we are not forgot,

lost in this turmoil,

about to be crushed out,

burned or stamped out

at best with sudden death.