Orchis militaris

sì come schiera d’ape che s’infiora

una f ïata e una si ritorna

là dove suo laboro s’insapora,

nel gran fior discendeva che s’addorna

di tante foglie, e quindi risaliva

là dove ’l süo amor sempre soggiorna.

—Dante, Paradiso

pottering in the chalk downs

captured my imagination

tree-muffled evening

inverted wishful thinking

village hills today a garden suburb

tang of seaweed romantically remote

I lived in hopes, another insect

haunting thyme-scented silence

half-believed in holidays

hung over me, withered in the bud

flowers were my first love

and seem likely to be my last afternoon

the scattered stars of pink anemone

mere memories of memories

*

not always there, flower names

are oddly interchangeable

archetypal pictures of a bee

in blue Bengal light

belonging partly to the vegetable

I joined as a private

abstracting faculty absent

one miracle repeated

a sense of reality

the Head already preparing

for the sacrifice

appearing sporadically

comet by accident

yet to come

*

anyone can write nonsense

about flowers

artificial paradises

prick with tears

resounding names

typical of a poet’s botany

a vague reference to violet

omissions in jam pots

upholstered imagery

of long purples

vascula crammed

historical parentheses

curiously heart-shaped

holes still unfound

*

fading flowers unrequited love

the discovery made me

sunlit for weeks

transfigured, fringed

fabulous lineaments

unmitigated relief

cylindrical spike, broader

divisions of the lip

annihilating consciousness

of future fallen plums

barriers burnt golden

a new wallpaper

where orchids lurked

he took my hand

*

damp expanse of skin

flowering in the waste patches

the wine bottle gleamed darkly

never-to-be-repeated lyric

unseasonable architecture

springing nakedly

taken for some ruined temple

few windows left intact

sky-blue irises conceal nothing

grave behind his spectacles

sudden leaf overnight

I looked again

dried skeletons of windless morning

stealing up like tiny birds