Give me the moon at my feet.A late in life poem titled "Prayer" by D. H. Lawrence, read by Mrs. Merriam Golden at Lawrence's memorial dedication ceremony in Taos, NM, September 15, 1935.
Set my feet upon the crescent like a Lord,
O let my ankles be bathed in moonlight,
That I may go sure and moon-shod,
Cool and bright-footed toward my goal.
The little snippet above is from his later work, I believe it's called "Apocalypse," and I've taken it from the book about Lawrence called "D. H. Lawrence in New Mexico, the Time is Different There" by Arthur J. Bachrach, a slim but quite wonderful volume of tales and truths of D. H. and Frieda Lawrence, Dorothy Brett, Mabel Dodge and Tony Luhan (Lujan) -- among others -- at their ranches in and away from Taos and elsewhere back in the day. It was a time long gone, a time most different to be sure, a time few of us remember, but if we've read or otherwise absorbed the pertinent works by the pertinent people, a time we cannot forget, a time that lives still in Taos and round about.
Who were these people? What did they think they were doing?
The premise of "Utopian Vistas, the Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture" by Lois Palkin Rudnick (like "D. H. Lawrence in New Mexico," published by UNM Press) is that all these Anglo ex-patriots came out to New Mexico after the First World War, many at the behest of Mabel Dodge Stearne (as she was when first she came to New Mexico in 1917, later after marrying a Taos Pueblo Indian, Antonio Lujan, she became Mabel Dodge Luhan), and here they created a counter-culture community based on the primacy and originality of the Native Indians and the Spanish settlers, the ultimate truth of art, and the purpose and primal beauty of the new community they themselves could -- and did -- create. They were said to have given up on the America they'd been taught to believe in and love and came to the realization that the true artistic spirit of the continent could be found in New Mexico, perhaps only in New Mexico, this vast and quirky, almost empty frontier land, where much has never changed in eons.
This is the place.
