[1235] Rose

Another guest poem inspired by Poem #1224 - Aseem <mithwarg@>
writes:

Reading the Gluck poem reminded me of this exquisite Williams poem that
I can't resist sharing:

The rose is obsolete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

  	-- William Carlos Williams

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


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[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1235.html
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