Explore "At Eleusis" by Hilda Doolittle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_What they did, / they did for Dionysos, / for ecstasy's sake: _
now take the basket, / think; / think of the moment you count / most foul in your life; / conjure it, / supplicate, / pray to it; / your face is bleak, you retract, / you dare not remember it:
stop; / it is too late. / the next stands by the altar step, / a child's face yet not innocent, / it will prove adequate, but you, / I could have spelt your peril at the gate, / yet for your mind's sake, / though you could not enter, / wait.
_What they did, / they did for Dionysos, / for ecstasy's sake: _
Now take the basket basket -- / (ah face in a dream, / did I not know your heart, / I would falter, / for each that fares onward / is my child; / ah can you wonder / that my hands shake, / that my knees tremble, / I a mortal, set in the goddess' place? )