Notes About The Poem

Image source:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baccara_Rose.jpg

Prelude

The flower is there, but not the flower's design
until I sing its petals like the sun:

the nectar trembling in the flower’s throat
is sweetened by the trembling of this string,

which links the purple voices carved from silence
along one single curve from then to then,

which is the flower’s design.

The flower’s design is what the flower is for:
it grows to fit itself to what I sing

and finds itself for once forever whole,
since in my song its bloom and bud are one,

moving in harmony.

These melodies hold nothing but its life.
The flower’s design is what the flower is.

These cypresses and poplars have a motion,
a gesture, and a speech no wind instils:
my song reveals them as a kind of rhythm,
a flexing of their being, which is joy,
a dance existing only in my music,
as do the sky, the mountains, and the sea.

My songs are to the light as light to darkness,
uncovering the dreams enwrapped in day.
Without them, all our vision sees is blindness,
and all our utterance announces death.


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Copyright © | Year Posted 2026

Poem

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