Ode to Spring
I can only find words for. And sometimes I can’t. Here are these flowers that stand for. I stand here on the sidewalk. I can’t stand it, but yes of course I understand it. Everything has to have meaning. Things have to stand for something. I can’t take the time. Even skin-deep is too deep. I say to the flower stand man: Beautiful flowers at your flower stand, man. I’ll take a dozen of the lilies. I’m standing as it were on my knees Before a little man up on a raised Runway altar where his flowers are arrayed Along the outside of the shop. I take my flames and pay inside. I go off and have sexual intercourse. The woman is the woman I love. The room displays thirteen lilies. I stand on the surface.
From Poems 1959–2009 by Frederick Seidel. Copyright © 2009 by Frederick Seidel. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, www.fsgbooks.com. All rights reserved.