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| James Tate |
Please do not steal my flowers;
they are my last love,
I am immune to everything
but flowers. The pageantry
of most encounters
is not quite as exciting
as the pollinating
pasqueflower, it's like a river
washing itself over
and over.
And when the pretty waitress
Lillian of French descent
walks over a grate in the sidewalk
and a gush of hot air
slams her dress over her ears
I do not enjoy the view
as much as that of phlox blooming.
I regard human beings as signals
and therefore bow my head
to hide my silly grin
at the raucous world--a monkey
hanging by its tail
from an intensely white cliff:
that's why we hold out
our hands all day, all life,
to catch something like that.
And nightletters, the urgent hundred
syllables by which we
express less than the minimal
Aristotelian tragedy--
an ash to swallow every morning
with my cereal,
a dictionary of stones in the evergreen.
In the distance the man
who is in charge of beating children
hangs his hands on my cart
and I sprinkle pollen of goldenrod
on his open wounds:
these are ordinary obligations,
but flowers, flowers--
there are so many colors;
more than there were
in poor Joseph's coat I think.
Note: "Peddler" is from The Oblivion Ha-Ha (1970) by James Tate.
