Rose -- William Carlos Williams

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:

(Poem #1235) Rose The rose is obsolete but each petal ends in an edge, the double facet cementing the grooved columns of air--The edge cuts without cutting meets--nothing--renews itself in metal or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 -- 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