Bowl of Roses

You've seen caged anger flare, seen two boys

knot themselves into a ball

of pure hatred, writhing on the ground

like an animal attacked by bees;

you've seen play-actors, sky-high exaggerators,

careening horses crashing down,

flinging their eyes around, baring their teeth

as if their muzzles were peeling away from their skulls

But now you see how such things are forgotten:

for before you stands the full bowl of roses,

which is unforgettable and wholly filled

with that utmost of presence and promise,

of offering up, beyond any power to give, of being here,

that might be ours- our utmost as well.

Living in silence, endlessly opening,

making use of space without taking space

from the space adjacent things diminish,

barest hint of outline, like untouched ground

and pure withinness, all strangely soft

and self-illuminating - to the very edge:

is there anything we know like this?

And like this: that a feeling arises

because flower petals touch petals?

And this: that one opens like an eye,

and under it lie eyelid after eyelid,

all tightly closed, as if through tenfold sleep

they might curb an inner power of sight.

And this above all: that through these petals

light must pass. From a thousand skies

slowly they filter out the drop of darkness

within whose fiery glow the tangled pack

of stamens bestirs itself and springs erect.

And the movement in the roses, look:

gestures from vibrations so minute

that they'd remain invisible, if their rays

did not fan out into the universe.

Look at that white one, blissfully opened

and standing there amid its spread of petals

like a Venus balanced on her shell;

and the blushing one, which as if flustered

turns across to one that is cool,

and how the cool one withdraws aloof,

and how that cold one stands, wrapped in itself,

among the open ones, that shed everything.

And what they shed: how it can be

at once light and heavy, a cloak, a burder,

a wing and a mask - it all depends -

and how they shed it: as before the loved one.

What can't they be: was that yellow one,

which lies there hollow and open, not the rind

of a fruit in which that very yellow,

more intense, more orange-red, was juice?

And was mere opening too much for this one,

since touched by air its inexpressible pink

has taken on the bitter aftertaste of lilac?

And that cambric one, is it not a dress

in which the shift still clings, soft and breath-warm,

both of them cast off together

in the morning shadows by the old woodland pond?

And this one, opalescent porcelain,

fragile, a shallow china cup

and full of tiny brilliant butterflies, - 

and that one, containing nothing but itself.

And aren't they all that way, simply self-containing,

if self-containing means: to transform the world outside

and the wind and rain and patience of Spring

and guilt and restlessness and muffled fate

and the darkness of the evening of earth

out to the roaming and flying and fleeing of the clouds

and the vague influence of distant stars

into a handful of inwardness.

Now it lies carefree in these opened roses.

~ Rilke