Day 424: What's in a Rose?

 

I love modernist poetry. It messes with your head! By that I mean, it's like a puzzle at first read, but then when the pieces of the puzzle start to come together, you  can't help but be wowed by its nifty cleverness. Like this poem - who would have thought you'd see geometry in a rose? 

Rose - William Carlos Williams
 

The rose is obsolete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