Conservatory
By James Merrill
Nothing is not so wasted, my dear wastrel,
That of our shelters you should fear to say
They totter, all that damask, one last day
Like roses tattered, waiting for the mistral,
Or red cape rippled by a mad bull’s nostril.
And say it in a blowsy idiom.
The anger of this wind is a strange anger,
Blows light, blows dark, blows vicious, blows humdrum:
Wryness is all, say, hearing the wind come,
And none of us is getting any younger.
Say
Bull in a rosebed, bull in the arena,
Wind in the red room where the flowers are kept,
Rose behind the jalousies, bull in Barcelona,
At the whine of blood, olé! the rowdy ladies clapped.
But, back to roses, if anything will save them,
Pleading rosefever, keep them in a wide bowl
Where wind through the wide window may unleaf them.
For risk is finer than bargain. And when the bull
Stomps out in France, thick ropes of roses wreathe him.
To kill the bull would be to spoil the game.
The French pluck roses back from the bull’s black shoulder.
And this, I mean, is delicacy, a name
For the fighter less than for the skilled beholder.
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Friday was nearly as warm as Thursday and it was sunnier, so I was in a good mood even though I had a bunch of chores to do. At least I did get to fold laundry while watching the end of Leap Year, and we got to walk in the park where even more snowdrops are blooming before stopping at Giant for Super Bowl and Valentine's Day supplies.
We had dinner with my parents, who got us Valentine desserts and goodies, then came home and watched the extended version of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which I enjoyed enormously -- there's not much added plot-wise but we get more Matt Murdoch and more triple Spider-Mans, plus a new post-credits scene. Brookside Gardens late winter conservatory:
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