Step-ladder, tiny pyramid for miserly hunchbacks, near-
sighted reckoner, the reseda, gathered in its cunning
little cabin, breaks up, clears itself of perfume.
This flower is the friend of silent eyes, of century-
old hands, of honest blades.
She grows near modest shale-like clusters — these,
devout, dyed purple, or else those, burnt to brown
ribbons, daughters seen from a libertarian star.
When the limed soil turns toward the sexton, the weekly
herb heralds, at the bottom of some old fashioned desk,
some thin copy-book bound in boards of somber blue and
covered with beautifully written secrets.
When she’s moved by a ridge of fired peat, the flower
forecasts for the initiated only such a display of
nymphomania, such nutritious folly, nauseating tropical
inheritance.
And when she becomes incrusted in the millennial
foundations of bits of shale, she’s the prophetess of
the glass reed, the measly pot, the head schoolmaster,
the starched virgin, the pigeon-breeding spiritualist.
Her perfume is a secondary condition since its
disproportion to her stem and its continual layers make
it unexplainable.
(Paul Colinet)
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Based on Topics: Friendship Poems, Flowers Poems, Secrets Poems, Daughters Poems, Stupidity Poems, Honesty & Integrity PoemsBased on Keywords: starched, millennial, shale, schoolmaster, secondary, disproportion, miserly, nutritious, limed, nauseating, initiated