Rose
The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air--The edge
cuts without cutting
meets--nothing--renews
itself in metal or porcelain--
whither? It ends--
But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry--
Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica--
the broken plate
glazed with a rose
Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses--
The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end--of roses
It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits
Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness--fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching
What
The place between the petal's
edge and the
From the petal's edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact--lifting
from it--neither hanging
nor pushing--
The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space
Commentary
Another guest poem inspired by Poem #1224 - Aseem writes:
Reading the Gluck poem reminded me of this exquisite Williams poem that I can’t resist sharing:
A poem that demands not so much to be read as to be fingered.
— Aseem
Martin adds
I’m not, in general, a big fan of Williams, but this was an amazing poem. Right from the blatantly provocative opening line, the images kept me enthralled with their careful dissonances and their almost mathematical beauty. As Aseem says, there’s something very tactile about the poem, a promise of precise, crystalline delicacy that demands to be fingered as much as read - an “infinitely fine, infinitely rigid” rendering of the rose that despite its inanimate imagery is not in the least bit sterile.
Note the strong undercurrent of Platonic philosophy -
to engage roses
becomes a geometry--
speaks of the Platonic ideal of a Rose, and the senses’ heavy “copper roses, steel roses” gradually refine themselves until we’re back to the “infinitely fine, infinitely rigid”, the ethereal nature remanifesting itself. And then the word ‘unbruised’ at the end simultaneously reminds us that the rose is indeed capable of being bruised (back to imperfect matter), and is nonetheless unbruised and “penetrating space”, uniting the twin threads of matter and geometry. Exquisite indeed.
— Martin