Richard Aldington and H.D.

One Hundred Years On

When I think of Aldington and H.D. I think of the Sixties, free love, tragedy and war.  The Sixties and free love because when they met in 1911 he was 19, she 25.  They discussed poetry in Soho restaurants, visits to the British Museum, talking of Classical Greece and the Gods.  They married in 1913 having spent time traveling in Italy together before marrying.  Their child was stillborn in the early days of World War 1, a tragedy presaging the tragedy of war.  No anti-war protestor, Aldington enlisted early and survived trench warfare in France which changed him utterly. 

In 1907,  H.D. had been engaged to Ezra Pound, in Philadelphia.  Aldington and H.D. met each other in London.  They were introduced by Pound as poets and sanctified as Imagists. They lived, for a time, like gods surrounded by mortals, flower children.  The war changed their world forever.  They separated but remained friends, were divorced in 1938.  Aldington gained fame as a war poet and a novelist.  H.D.'s poetry was neglected until the Sixties made free love acceptable again, although Aldington anthologized three of her poems in The Viking Book of Poetry of the English-Speaking World, first published in 1941.

Aldington became infamous when in a 1955 biography he pulled T.E. Lawrence off the pedestal erected for him by the British Establishment, notably Winston Churchill and Robert Graves.   He lived most of his life outside England, was a friend of D.H. Lawrence and Lawrence Durrell.  His obituary said he was "an angry young man" and "an angry old man to the end". 

H.D. is probably better known now than Aldington.  Bisexual, she had a child while living with an artist during the war years while Aldington was in France.   Later she formed a lasting relationship with Bryher, the penname of Annie Winifred Ellerman. She lived most of her life in Switzerland and was a patient of Freud.

It's been roughly one hundred years since Aldington left H.D.and her baby, by another man, with Bryher.

                                               

Possession (Richard Aldington)                                                From Hymen (H.D.)

I must possess you utterly                                                     Never more will the wind

And utterly must you possess me;                                         Cherish you again,

So even if that dreamer's tale                                                 Never more will the rain.

Of heaven and hell be true

There shall be two spirits rived together                                 Never more

Either in whatever peace be heaven                                       Shall we find you bright

Or in the icy whirlwind that is hell                                          In the snow and wind.

For those who loved each other more than God-

So that the other spirits shall cry out:                                     The snow is melted,

'Ah!  Look how the ancient love yet holds to them                 The snow is gone,

That these two ghosts are never driven apart                         And you are flown:

But kiss with shadowy kisses and still take

Joy from the mingling of their misty limbs!'                          Like a bird out of our hand,

                                                                                             Like a light out of our heart,

                                                                                              You are gone.

           

Dick Russell

A shorter version published in Orbis, #160; 2012

            

    &

            I am so happy today

 feel myself encompassing the earth

    existing in all forms

        

            I've found beauty in the

                  quiet life of reeds           

    seen love in the eyes

                        of a pride of lions
heard melody issuing

                           from within the city

   I've reached

      I have reached out

            my arms have reached

   my hands have found

                        have found           

                                    © Dick Russell

                                    First published in Wolfprints, London, 1971

  

                               Romance

                  i painted the colors that awaken your eye

          apple green  orange  and lemon

                  by the grey sundial in the garden

                                  under the gables

          those turrets flying silken banners

               of a long bodied dragon

                       a proud white swan

                  on the morning of the tournament

                  i surrounded you with images

                  captured you in the colors of nakedness

                                        & love...

                        on sheltered moss

                  a green lea by an inland lagoon

              where bushes grew unkempt over disused paths

          sea weed smelt its way to them over the sand dunes

          past the signs    cotton caught on the briars

          a single battered shoe through which grass had thrust

          the many small feet memories of the seaside

                know that this sea is of your mythology

             & has not been called sea by your gods

                know the words of your lore-master for all things

             & your life will not lack

                         still main is the dark deep

                         eel-home & sailor's plain

  

                    now steep slopes foam over shoals

                    by sheltered moss lies

                    a sweet water charm

           once a kiss caught my warbling tongue

                taught it an old song

                told me of a deep erotic note with which to blend

                to flavor to serve my songs

                            of sun rising

                              water coming in from sea

                                        subtle camouflage of tiger and deer

                   protective dark

                          resting time spent in the shade of trees

                my songs return to the forest

                where there is shelter from rain

                dry wood no longer needed by trees

                we may walk with honor along

                                     those paths

                     at nightfall   sleep amongst gods

             but only look

             we are separate

           our eyes may perceive the rainbow

          the great archway of our gods

                     but we are apart

                  they have left us

                & the rain falling upon us

                  our mouth full of locusts,

                                        full of green

                                 they have left us

                                                 alone

                              walking with our rain

                             each stride taking us north

                                    to the north

                                             & the deep warmth

                                   of our earth

                                          in our future

            Dick Russell

            from Wolfprints, 1971
            Workshop Press, London