Your peers blossom in a sunlit room,
By curtain, cabinet and New Year’s knot;
They wear the season’s warm and hopeful bloom,
Yet all that lives in time must live and rot.
No sooner do they flower than they fade—
For all that dwells in place must know an end,
And every gift that light and context made
Is but a loan that dying days must lend.
But you are shorn of window, clock and floor,
Against a formless neither-here-nor-there;
Your dark hands hold their pink blooms evermore,
Buds ever-opening, blossoms always fair.
No metaphor, no symbol * left to say—
You simply are, and cannot pass away.
*The plum blossom is celebrated for its resilience against the last onslaught of winter and for presaging the arrival of spring. Hence it is an auspicious plant for Lunar New Year, a symbol of endurance and renewal.
Site Title 