QUOTE : Ode to a Cluster of Violets<br /><br />Crisp cluster<br />plunged in shadow.<br />Drops of violet water<br />and raw sunlight<br />floated up with your scent.<br />A fresh<br />subterranean beauty<br />climbed up from your buds<br />thrilling my eyes and my life.<br /><br />One at a time, flowers<br />that stretched forward<br />silvery stalks,<br />creeping closer to an obscure light<br />shoot by shoot in the shadows,<br />till they crowned<br />the mysterious mass<br />with an intense weight of perfume<br />and together<br />formed a single star<br />with a far-off scent and a purple center.<br /><br />Poignant cluster<br />intimate<br />scent<br />of nature,<br />you resemble<br />a wave, or a head of hair,<br />or the gaze<br />of a ruined water nymph<br />sunk in the depths.<br />But up close,<br />in your fragrance’s<br />blue brazenness,<br />you exhale the earth,<br />an earthly flower, an earthen<br />smell and your ultraviolet<br />gleam<br />in volcanoes’ faraway fires.<br /><br />Into your loveliness I sink<br />a weathered face,<br />a face that dust has often abused.<br />You deliver<br />something out of the soil.<br />It isn’t simply perfume,<br />nor simply the perfect cry<br />of your entire color, no: it’s<br />a word sprinkled with dew,<br />a flowering wetness with roots.<br /><br />Fragile cluster of starry<br />violets,<br />tiny, mysterious<br />planet<br />of marine phosphorescence,<br />nocturnal bouquet nestled in green leaves:<br />the truth is<br />there is no blue word to express you.<br /><br />Better than any word<br />is the pulse of your scent.<br /><br />Pablo Neruda, <i>Odes to Common Things</i>. (Bulfinch; Bilingual edition May 1, 1994) Originally published 1961.