Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
We lived long together
a life filled,
if you will,
with flowers. So that
I was cheered
when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
in hell.
Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers
that we both loved,
even to this poor
colorless thing-
I saw it
when I was a child-
little prized among the living
but the dead see,
asking among themselves:
What do I remember
that was shaped
as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
with tears.
Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
though too weak a wash of crimson
colors it
to make it wholly credible.
There is something
something urgent
I have to say to you
and you alone
but it must wait
while I drink in
the joy of your approach,
perhaps for the last time.
And so
with fear in my heart
I drag it out
and keep on talking
for I dare not stop.
Listen while I talk on
against time.
It will not be
for long.
I have forgot
and yet I see clearly enough
something
central to the sky
which ranges round it.
An odor
springs from it!
A sweetest odor!
Honeysuckle! And now
there comes the buzzing of a bee!
and a whole flood
of sister memories!
Only give me time,
time to recall them
before I shall speak out.
Give me time,
time.
When I was a boy
I kept a book
to which, from time
to time,
I added pressed flowers
until, after a time,
I had a good collection.
The asphodel,
forebodingly,
among them.
I bring you,
reawakened,
a memory of those flowers.
They were sweet
when I pressed them
and retained
something of their sweetness
a long time.
It is a curious odor,
a moral odor,
that brings me
near to you.
The color
was the first to go.
There had come to me
a challenge,
your dear self,
mortal as I was,
the lily's throat
to the hummingbird!
Endless wealth,
I thought,
held out its arms to me.
A thousand tropics
in an apple blossom.
The generous earth itself
gave us lief.
The whole world
became my garden!
But the sea
which no one tends
is also a garden
when the sun strikes it
and the waves
are wakened.
I have seen it
and so have you
when it puts all flowers
to shame.
Too, there are the starfish
stiffened by the sun
and other sea wrack
and weeds. We knew that
along with the rest of it
for we were born by the sea,
knew its rose hedges
to the very water's brink.
There the pink mallow grows
and in their season
strawberries
and there, later,
we went to gather
the wild plum.
I cannot say
that I have gone to hell
for your love
but often
found myself there
in your pursuit.
I do not like it
and wanted to be
in heaven. Hear me out.
Do not turn away.
I have learned much in my life
from books
and out of them
about love.
Death
is not the end of it.
There is a hierarchy
which can be attained,
I think,
in its service.
Its guerdon
is a fairy flower;
a cat of twenty lives.
If no one came to try it
the world
would be the loser.
It has been
for you and me
as one who watches a storm
come in over the water.
We have stood
from year to year
before the spectacle of our lives
with joined hands.
The storm unfolds.
Lightning
plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north
is placid,
blue in the afterglow
as the storm piles up.
It is a flower
that will soon reach
the apex of its bloom.
We danced,
in our minds,
and read a book together.
You remember?
It was a serious book.
And so books
entered our lives.
The sea! The sea!
Always
when I think of the sea
there comes to mind
the Iliad
and Helen's public fault
that bred it.
Were it not for that
there would have been
no poem but the world
if we had remembered,
those crimson petals
spilled among the stones,
would have called it simply
murder.
The sexual orchid that bloomed then
sending so many
disinterested
men to their graves
has left its memory
to a race of fools
or heroes
if silence is a virtue.
The sea alone
with its multiplicity
holds any hope.
The storm
has proven abortive
but we remain
after the thoughts it roused
to
re-cement our lives.
It is the mind
the mind
that must be cured
short of death's
intervention,
and the will becomes again
a garden. The poem
is complex and the place made
in our lives
for the poem.
Silence can be complex too,
but you do not get far
with silence.
Begin again.
It is like Homer's
catalogue of ships:
it fills up the time.
I speak in figures,
well enough, the dresses
you wear are figures also,
we could not meet
otherwise. When I speak
of flowers
it is to recall
that at one time
we were young.
All women are not Helen,
I know that,
but have Helen in their hearts.
My sweet,
you have it also, therefore
I love you
and could not love you otherwise.
Imagine you saw
a field made up of women
all silver-white.
What should you do
but love them?
The storm bursts
or fades! it is not
the end of the world.
Love is something else,
or so I thought it,
a garden which expands,
though I knew you as a woman
and never thought otherwise,
until the whole sea
has been taken up
and all its gardens.
It was the love of love,
the love that swallows up all else,
a grateful love,
a love of nature, of people,
of animals,
a love engendering
gentleness and goodness
that moved me
and that I saw in you.
I should have known,
though I did not,
that the lily-of-the-valley
is a flower makes many ill
who whiff it.
We had our children,
rivals in the general onslaught.
I put them aside
though I cared for them.
as well as any man
could care for his children
according to my lights.
You understand
I had to meet you
after the event
and have still to meet you.
Love
to which you too shall bow
along with me-
a flower
a weakest flower
shall be our trust
and not because
we are too feeble
to do otherwise
but because
at the height of my power
I risked what I had to do,
therefore to prove
that we love each other
while my very bones sweated
that I could not cry to you
in the act.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides.
poem by William Carlos Williams
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Related quotes
Much More Than Love
Much more than green looks the sea in your twinkling eye,
Much more than salty are your eyes in the sea transgress,
Much more than greeny are leaves floating on waves to die,
In greeny waves, greeny eyes searched the beauty of loneliness.
Much more than you means your love to my eyes of keen,
Much more than love means the green of your sad tear,
Much more than sadness means the beauty of your green,
Much more than green means your life for me, my dear.
Dedicated to Alfred Lord Tennyson.
poem by Marieta Maglas
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Much More Than You
Much more than greeny looks the sea in your eye,
Much more than salty are your eyes in its waves,
Much more than greeny are leaves floating on high
In green waves, green eyes searched the beauty of aves.
Much more than you means love to my eyes of keen,
Much more than love means the green of your sad tear,
Much more than sadness means the beauty of green,
Much more than green means your life for me, my dear.
poem by Marieta Maglas
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Fragments
I am the monarch of the Sea,
The ruler of the Queen's Navee,--
When at anchor here I ride,
My bosom swells with pride,
And I snap my fingers at a foeman's taunts.
And so do his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts
His sisters and his cousins!
Whom he reckons by the dozens,
And his aunts!
'I am the lowliest tar
That sails the water.
And you, proud maiden, are
My captain's daughter.'
'Refrain, audacious tar.
Your suit from pressing;
Remember what you are,
And whom addressing.'
For I am called Little Buttercup,--dear Little Buttercup,
Though I never could tell why;
But still I'm called Buttercup,--poor Little Buttercup,
Sweet Little Buttercup I!
Fair moon, to thee I sing
Bright regent of the heavens;
Say, why is every thing
Either at sixes or at sevens!
He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it,
And it's greatly to his credit
That he is an Englishman.
poem by Louisa May Alcott
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Behold The Flower Of The Waterlily
Behold the flower of the waterlily
The pretty pretty flower
Below the surface is a long long stem
That from deep, floats the flower high
You can't just have the flower, no no no
It cannot be with out its deep reaching stem
It's anchored with integrity
And with out what's underneath, she will die.
poem by Stevie Taite
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Yesterday's Flower
Yesterday's Flower
sunshine falls on potent flowers
like the nectar of youth's love
' blooms in emerald green ', held captive rose buds
dance to the music of the wind
life at first soft and sweet subtle
a whisper behind the floral scene
we're short lived as the fragrance arose
for the intoxication of seasons past
the celebration of flower's spring
worn thin life's very stem
dew drops hang so sparkling clear
and the musk of a honeysuckle nights
caress the moment and kiss good-by
youth the bloom of a new flower
now spent and broken
and the Fall winds weep!
' We are like a lovely flower, fragrant and firm until
the season of our lives take the lively parts slowly.'
For death waits for no one!
poem by Myrtle Thomas
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The Story of My Flower
Born a lovely flower
Watered with fresh water during rainy seasons
Sprinkled with just enough during the droughts
The flower lived to blossom
With scented petals and green leaves
in a pot so large to take all it could bear.
One sunny day
the pot with the flower was shifted
shifted to a completely new location
where it was deprived of the sunlight
and the abundance of water.
Necessary it was
A new start in a life supposedly so complete.
Time went by
Nevertheless, the flower continued blooming
The petals now larger
The scent even more appealing
The flower survived even without the bare necessities.
The now sensitive flower
Soon attracted the eyes of predators
A simple glance to start with
Then became a soft touch
Followed by multiples of rough care.
Soon the flower started to lose its shape and form
Being given insufficient supply of water
Inappropriate fertilizers
And most of all the wrong attention.
At last it withered
After long hours of torture
Long days of loneliness
and years of abundance
it turned yellow, then brown
Finally, what remained was just a lifeless stem
standing in an old dirty pot.
poem by Alexandra Isnard
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Life is Like A Flower
Life is like a flower.
It starts out as a seed,
Then a root,
A stem with a leaf,
Leaves and then a beautiful flower.
A baby.
Then learns how 2 talk,
Then the child is a flower.
Life is like a flower,
You are a flower
poem by LeLe Gallon
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I am your Flower
a beautiful flower waved in the wind
bent with the breeze.
you came along, and, noticed it.
stooping down to kneel in the dirt,
you examined its petals
felt its delicate leaves.
you picked the flower,
broke its roots,
and placed its unchained stem into your clasped hand.
you carried the flower with you
showed it to friends, acquaintances,
made everyone take notice
of the beauty you found.
and strangely enough,
this flower did not wilt,
but remained strongly vibrant
in its glass of water
as you carefully attended to it.
yet as the year continued,
you worried and wondered
if maybe your choosing of this flower hurt it.
was it meant to be connected with the earth?
should you have stood and turned away
without choosing this flower
and picking it up for your own?
was your breaking of the stem a mistake?
should you have left it?
these questions filled your mind.
yet your flower remained vibrant and strong
in her glass of water.
confined, no, now free.
and freedom brings its own nourishment.
nourishment that cannot be found
attached to the ground.
you chose the flower above the rest,
and picked her to be yours.
will you keep me?
you have freed me.
my glass of water is refreshing.
your hand clasping my stem is enough
for me to stay and choose you
above the sun, more than the soil,
i cannot wilt if you take care of me as you have.
for a broken stem and a chosen flower
cannot be returned.
i must be kept or left to die.
poem by Lors Dilouley
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Woodland Peace
Sweet as Eden is the air,
And Eden-sweet the ray.
No Paradise is lost for them
Who foot by branching root and stem,
And lightly with the woodland share
The change of night and day.
Here all say,
We serve her, even as I:
We brood, we strive to sky,
We gaze upon decay,
We wot of life through death,
How each feeds each we spy;
And is a tangle round,
Are patient; what is dumb
We question not, nor ask
The silent to give sound,
The hidden to unmask,
The distant to draw near.
And this the woodland saith:
I know not hope or fear;
I take whate'er may come;
I raise my head to aspects fair,
From foul I turn away.
Sweet as Eden is the air,
And Eden-sweet the ray.
poem by George Meredith
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ThisFlower
ThisFlower
ThisFlower
This flower had a yellow center white lapetals
with Violet edges each little part a much larger
representation of this whole thing was not
as big as mye own hand eye devised a plan quite
similar to pulling stem from apple reading
alphabetic eye have to get to V for Violet
but instead of tempting fate or GOD or Jesus
his own SON or human reflex eye placed no letter
on this game but gamely twisted this flower
in a circle flicking petals in the air until
to mye surprise only one remained with
yellow centered white for love with Violet
edges this Symbol of our love this Flower
stem of green to base this Flower on,
this viable of love.
poem by Charles Hice
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The Flower of Leaves
The Flower of Leaves, does not speak, nor sing!
She breathes intensly and plays on sweet strings
The Flower of Leaves, in spring, does not bloom,
She hangs in the heat and weeps low in gloom
The Flower of Leaves, shrouds mis'ry and pain,
Yet exudes in song warm swelling disdain
The Flower of Leaves, shades but one pale green,
Yet blossoms 'neath moonlight in silv'ry gleam
She relieves, and like Great Nature, serene,
In stormless gardens passes through unseen
Sublime as rainfall, sincere as the sea,
O Heaven, such life that blooms before me!
Who only knows that which my heart believes,
In such mystique of The Flower of Leaves!
poem by Iam notThou
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A Bee Reflects
Buttercup, I am the fluxing
structure that connects.
You and I are the universe,
a dancing couplet specked
in the whirl of timelessness;
the flaming flowering
of our singularity.
Buttercup, I fed the leopard
through the veins of time,
contriving sequences:
the hard poetry of hunger,
the gravity of death,
a single cell to petals
to tragic wings
Buttercup, we are rolling,
though a long darkness
through our lonely selves.
We are the flickering spark
in the will of the endless way,
of the burning down
of beauty.
26 12 11
Farewell
FAREWELL: we two shall still meet day by day,
Live side by side;
But never more shall heart respond to heart.
Two stranger boats can drift adown one tide,
Two branches on one stem grow green apart.
Farewell, I say.
Farewell: chance travellers, as the path they tread,
Change words and smile,
And share their travellers' fortunes, friend with friend,
And yet are foreign in their thoughts the while,
Several, alone, save that one way they wend.
Farewell; 'tis said.
Farewell: ever the bitter asphodel
Outlives love's rose;
The fruit and blossom of the dead for us.
Ah, answer me, should this have been the close,
To be together and be sundered thus?
But yet, farewell.
poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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Asphodel
Dry grass is shifting
in chill autumn wind
soft hills once green
are brown once again
I yearn for the rain,
winter's blessing to fall
and spread wide white fields
of asphodel.
Gray stones mark my
resting place
deep in the earth
where I lie by dark lakes,
but in winter I crave
the fruit of the pall
Oh, spread wide bright fields
of asphodel.
___________
Author's Note: Asphodel, in Ancient Greek mythology, is a favored food of the dead and is often planted at grave-sites.
poem by Steven Federle
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The Green Thicket
All in a green thicket I heard a bird sing,
And blithe though his song was it made the tears spring,
To hear a bird sing as he swung on his spray,
All in a green thicket at break of the day.
All in a green thicket his song it did pour
That told of the Springs that shall come nevermore,
That sang of sweet blossoms, now faded and dry,
All in a green thicket in Aprils gone by.
All in a green thicket that morning in Spring,
I smelt the sharp scent of each young growing thing,
I smelt the sweet herbage all drowned with the dew,
And the time that's gone from me was with me anew.
All in a green thicket at break of the day
It was like the dear voice of a friend far away,
It was like the kind touch of a hand that I know,
And the smile and the tears of dead Aprils ago,
All in a green thicket one morning in Spring,
For to smell the young woodland and hear the bird sing,
Oh, long did I loiter and dream by the way,
All in a green thicket at break of the day.
poem by Cicely Fox Smith
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My Garden
My garden aboundeth in pleasant nooks
And fragrance is over it all;
For sweet is the smell of my old, old books
In their places against the wall.
Here is a folio that's grim with age
And yellow and green with mould;
There's the breath of the sea on every page
And the hint of a stanch ship's hold.
And here is a treasure from France la belle
Exhaleth a faint perfume
Of wedded lily and asphodel
In a garden of song abloom.
And this wee little book of Puritan mien
And rude, conspicuous print
Hath the Yankee flavor of wintergreen,
Or, may be, of peppermint.
In Walton the brooks a-babbling tell
Where the cheery daisy grows,
And where in meadow or woodland dwell
The buttercup and the rose.
But best beloved of books, I ween,
Are those which one perceives
Are hallowed by ashes dropped between
The yellow, well-thumbed leaves.
For it's here a laugh and it's there a tear,
Till the treasured book is read;
And the ashes betwixt the pages here
Tell us of one long dead.
But the gracious presence reappears
As we read the book again,
And the fragrance of precious, distant years
Filleth the hearts of men.
Come, pluck with me in my garden nooks
The posies that bloom for all;
Oh, sweet is the smell of my old, old books
In their places against the wall!
poem by Eugene Field
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Like A Flower
Nothing in life
Can match the beauty of a flower
Its frailness
Its softness
Just like man differs
in shapes and sizes
Each flower can be differed in color
Just like life a flower is diverse
But not unpredictable
A good thing it is “just like”
For if life was only a flower
It was indeed
Short lived
poem by Zarina Binda
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On Love And Beauty: I: To A Promessa Sposa
Look on this flower, which, from its little tree
Of bodily stem and branches and leaves green,
Leans lovelier, being toucht, and smelt, and seen
A Rose, a Rose, a Rose! and, though thy three
Senses praise it triply unto thee,
And all their parlous difference intervene,
Yet unto thee, who knowest what they mean,
Thee who art one, and hast been, and shalt be,
Is one as thou; one Rose, one beauteous Rose,
One rosy Beauty. Who shall reason why
The slow stem, on a sudden season, shows
It can be worm unto this butterfly?
We know but this, that when yon ecstasy
Transfigures the green tree, its time of fruit is nigh.
poem by Sydney Thompson Dobell
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Another Day
The sun is finally shining, warming my skin,
The horses are poking their heads out of the barn,
The snow has lifted, revealing green grass,
The ground still frozen, ice still on the pond,
Playing with the early morning mountain due, in between my fingers,
Off the leaf of a rose bush.
I pluck a flower out of the cold ground,
The sweet innocents of the little pink thing makes me smile,
Twirling in my fingers ever so gently,
Smelling its aroma,
Such magnificence in a small thing,
The peddles softly brushing against my checks
Sitting on this hard wooden bench,
All bundled up, braving the cold,
Admiring my flower, seeing puppies play, and
The sun that I haven’t seen in weeks, say hello.
Awe how nature can silently sing.
All to the tune of the kitchen mixer’s bellow,
Someone is making cookie doe.
Yep this is a start to just another day,
Another day, in Oregon
poem by Mrs. Cynosure
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Lift Me Up Like You've Plucked a Buttercup
When you come around finding you have found,
You've settled down.
With slowed jets ready to quit your lippin'
And prepared to sit and begin to listen'...
You've done shifted from a drifter position.
And it's there to be gripped!
All that life has blessed you with!
ooo-ooo
Many in fits can't handle what they get.
And they seek partnerships...
That end in arguments,
Gone ballistic.
Left in realistic lethal pieces.
Lift me up!
Like you've plucked a buttercup,
From your weaving...
Through the weeds you've been sneezing.
Lift me up!
Like you've plucked a buttercup,
From your weaving...
Through the weeds you've been breathing.
Just leave don't mention...
Any attitude you've got,
That's dropped you mopin'!
Take a little whiff of me I'll free you easy.
I'm that destiny you need.
Lift me up!
Like you've plucked a buttercup,
From your weaving...
Through the weeds you've been sneezing.
Lift me up!
Like you've plucked a buttercup,
From your weaving...
Through the weeds you've been breathing.
When you come around finding you have found,
You've settled down.
With slowed jets ready to quit your lippin'
And prepared to sit and begin to listen'...
You've done shifted from a drifter position.
And it's there to be gripped!
All that life has blessed you with!
ooo-ooo
Lift me up!
Like you've plucked a buttercup,
From your weaving...
Through the weeds you've been sneezing.
Lift me up!
Like you've plucked a buttercup,
From your weaving...
Through the weeds you've been breathing.
ooo-ooo
Just Lift me up!
Like you've plucked a buttercup,
From your weaving...
Through the weeds you've been sneezing.
Lift me up!
Like you've plucked a buttercup,
From your weaving...
Through the weeds you've been breathing.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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