Quatrain 18
Quatrain 18 of 75
“I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.”
Reflection · Spring
I sometimes think — the most un-dogmatic opening in literature. Not I believe, not I know. Sometimes I think. A provisional thought held lightly, knowing it cannot be proved, knowing it is the kind of truth that is more real than the kind that can. The rose is reddest where Caesar bled. The hyacinth was a lovely head before it became a flower. This is not mysticism — it is the accurate observation that the same matter cycles through. The blood that soaked the ground becomes the element that reddens the petal. Not metaphorically. Actually.
In spring this verse is both beautiful and vertiginous. Every rose in the Farvardin garden contains the dissolved history of everything that has died in its soil. When you cut a rose and bring it inside, you are bringing in a compressed history of the ground it grew from. Hold it gently. It is full of people.