Domesticated flowers

Domesticated flowers

Ana Paula Arendt

A single gesture may be born of impulse;

repeated through the years, it learns to stay.

A faithfulness that does not seek to compulse,

and keeps, through time, its own devoted way.

I carry on, not for what result it may ensue,

but because silence does not govern what I do.

Perhaps these flowers I give are not a question

to which you should simply make reply;

perhaps they were a sentence, whole and clear,

complete beneath the silence of your sky.

Still flowers, and more flowers, to celebrate

that I have found one who lets my gesture be;

who does not close the hand that I extend,

but leaves my giving wholly, strangely free.

And perhaps they are not a sentence whole,

nor each one’s imagination bearing lovely fruit.

From flowers springs the same fruit once more:

the savour of a happiness, complete and absolute.

It is a woman, they say, the whole world through,

Who waits to be given bouquets and flowers.

Still, I persist in ways the old people never knew:

I want you to feel like I would, replenished in happy hours.

I want you also to feel different from all other men;

Indeed, that is you, different from all, to my eyes.

And I hope you seize the prize you deserve before them:

being wanted and praised, held in kind surprise.

Yes, I sent you flowers and poems through all these many years…

All others whom I send them to reply with words and cheers.

But it is precisely this that makes you so singular to me:

you give the flowers no language, you let them flowers be.

I hope you gladly show them off, and since you do not refuse…

I cannot cease to send you from my heart what you freely choose:

Flowers, poetry, feelings, prayers, till time itself shall end–

they nourish me in giving; your receiving makes me send.

Yet my vast experience tells me: one day you will reply.

Perhaps to ask me, finally, why these flowers still arrive…

And I hope, by then, to have learned from what you do:

to offer something singular, becoming speechless, too.

Ana Paula Arendt . The Golden Book of Faith .