Des Fleurs Magiques

Des Fleurs Magiques

Des fleurs magiques bourdonnaient. Les talus le berçaient. Des bêtes d’une élégance fabuleuse circulaient. Les nuées s’amassaient sur la haute mer faite d’une éternité de chaudes larmes.
(Rimbaud, Illuminations, ENFANCE, II)

A language I can’t really understand –
not more than three or four words in ten –
opens up before me somewhat like a flower

or rather, like a close-up of an impressionist
painting of a flower; I get the general gist
when the turn of its petal takes on a certain colour,

my sunlight catches on its barbs and strands
of meaning as it were, and what I understand
may lack the subtlety of stamen, filament and anther,

but isn’t there a form the flower’s form suggests
which may be less apparent to gardener than guests
to a garden, flowers being as much one thing as another?

The painting above is a detail from Chrysanthemums in a Chinese Vase by Henri Matisse (1902) Private Collection.