Clare Pollard
Ghazal of the Rose
Ghazal of the Rose
When you say 'beauty', my mind solicits the rose.
It is always burning in its moment, the rose,
yet you never want it different, so it stays
eternal and symmetrical as art, the rose.
I salivate at its bowls of scent:
I can look but must not eat the rose.
I could press my face forever, a pig in the sty,
to that luxuriant snout the rose,
could bask in its fleshpot for all time –
in that cunt within a cunt within a cunt the rose.
I can turn blood to petals, wounds to blooms,
with that symbol close to poets’ hearts, the rose.
Do we wrong the world, dwelling on thorns
or piercing pinks, kneeling to our saint the rose?
They twine around the sleeping castle.
In our walled gardens we soon resent the rose.
Am I clearly lost in its shadowy maze,
or is there something quick in me that lights the rose?