The Flower Market in Kolkata

A slightly longer poem for my readers, concerning a complex issue of consciousness: belonging to another person while continuing to love.

May you find peace and enjoy the read!

The Flower Market in Kolkata

Ana Paula Arendt*

Now there is a woman who would become a woman—what she is.

She longs to become herself without adversatives.

Yet she must overcome what she has been made:

to be for a man.

Otherwise she risks dissolving—

not enough for him, not enough for herself.

Belonging, and not dissolving.

She is a poet, and she walks away from war:

one man sharpening words against another,

millions leaning in to hear the threat—

crowds bending close

to hear the blade of hatred pass.

Yet what she wants—more than anything—

is what every woman wants:

to make a man happy,

and be the place where his day falls quiet;

to keep him from breaking,

and be the one in whom he finds himself again.

So she walks toward the market,

where devotion is available in flowers–

for each god, a blossom,

for each flower, a name.

Color everywhere.

Brightness gathered in rows,

laid out at a gentle price.

A vivid paradise.

Wet earth beneath her steps…

Is there power in this longing?

Is there possession?

Still, there is more sweetness than sorrow,

for the world is not ours to command.

And yet—her man must be hers,

so that nothing in her remains ungiven.

Lotus and marigold, red hibiscus,

red roses,

jasmine, parijatas, sunflowers—

garlands of madar waiting

for a wrist, a throat, a vow.

Flowers speak—

without needing words.

They do not argue.

Each Indian god has a chosen flower

to be their sacred blossoms in unseen gardens,

a pure presence of fragrance and form.

Yet between what she gives

and what remains hers

there stretches a distance.

This is the miracle required:

from chasm between land and river,

a paper boat undone in water,

her heart—

a small, broken toy in men’s hands,

a heart ground into sand.

The river sees otherwise than the land.

The river must run.

The land would gather and keep.

And still the waters run and are kept.

So much conflict in the world—

yet river and land together sustain

trees, bushes, flowers, boats:

one forever seeking the sea,

the other holding it

in a living balance.

And sometimes in life

there is only land.

Then one must choose:

abandon oneself,

to accept what is,

or remake the visible

until desire can live there again.

On the inside,

a word stirs—love—

and suddenly

reasons break out everywhere,

arranged in baskets of flowers:

a votive learning

of what matters most.

Memories run through the heart

as the Ganges through Kolkata.

A market sets its prices—

conditions always shifting.

And yet these flowers stand in contrast:

for what we seek most in life

is non-negotiable.

There, in Kolkata, a market

of flowers for sacred devotion—

a place where no bargaining holds.

On the outside,

the market hums

like a throat about to confess;

garlands breathe

against the wrist like thought.

The sunflowers in the hand,

unread, unneeded by the Sun,

following light to match

the most luminous, finely wrought words—

the old, familiar rhymes

poets have always given.

Along the banks of the Ganges,

couples stand within their weddings,

bright, willingly unknowing of what will come,

already forgiving what will wound them,

already forgetting what will make of life a labor.

They know—and still

they stand inside a happiness

they do not question.

There: the flower market—

a place that unsettles the ordinary world,

a space where one becomes special,

more special than all others.

After giving oneself to another,

there is no return.

One cannot take oneself back.

Now one life rests inside another—

and mistakes can no longer end

in mere disappointment.

Everything must be invented again.

Fresh flowers must be chosen—

the quiet gods behind the sellers,

with work-worn, cracked hands

holding prices steady,

raising always a better offer,

making of the world a white road to travel,

a softening place for the coming of sleep.

Rivalry will come—

perhaps carried away by the river.

Old wounds will rise—

perhaps from hidden crevices,

offering small and delicate blooms.

Opposition does not make sense

in a market of flowers.

And yet—

to surrender the control of one’s life to another

remains almost impossible.

Love must happen.

And yet—it may not.

Failure darkens the water.

Life has no final conflict—

only uncertainty.

Is love taking place?

So many flowers

yet never finding for you

one wholly unlike the rest.

All charm, all beauty,

returns to form.

The sorrow of not belonging—

and still, the refusal

to abandon what does not work.

Each wound in me

a quiet whisper

in the act of choosing.

The Hindu gods and goddesses

must borrow from the universe

just enough creative force

to let their beauty remain unchanged.

Then I was given there

free flowers from those toiling hands.

Flowers never being enough,

only becoming more of the same

that you already have.

Usual thoughts and feelings

disappear by remaining the same.

But goodness needs nothing!

It simply stands.*

It is enough.

Yes, those flowers have withered—

yet in the poet’s eyes

they open more beautifully than ever.

Flowers, virtues—

a goodness without strength

shall always lose, shall always perish.

Then selflessness returns.

Then the world opens.

From nothing left,

everything newly made.

There are countless flowers in that market—

none so different from the others.

But those I held,

those that perished,

are the only ones that remained for you,

with every wound in my heart.

Beyond possession—

remaining,

and giving you all the flowers.

Less healed

in the  victorious, secret bliss of a

sacred devotion

than in the yearning to love you…

Never achieving to tell you of it,

words became so intense

that they could not be spoken.

All poetry became useless—

just flowers offered

to create the world.

Love—

it endured and blossomed

as that market of no bargains,

where a free flower

lends all her beauty

to our shining eyes.

Love,

a water

in which all flowers live.

*Toni Morrison.

*Ana Paula Arendt, pen name of R. P. Alencar, is a Brazilian poet and diplomat posted in India.