Bee Over Saguaro Blossoms — Image by kenne
Desert Flowers
Living in a wide landscape are the flowers –
Rosenberg I only repeat what you were saying –
the shell and the hawk every hour
are slaying men and jerboas, slaying
the mind: but the body can fill
the hungry flowers and the dogs who cry words
at nights, the most hostile things of all.
But that is not news. Each time the night discards
draperies on the eyes and leaves the mind awake
I look each side of the door of sleep
for the little coin it will take
to buy the secret I shall not keep.
I see men as trees suffering
or confound the detail and the horizon.
Lay the coin on my tongue and I will sing
of what the others never set eyes on.
— Keith Douglas
(“Succinct but mysterious, Desert Flowers belongs to a liminal state between sleeping and waking, night and day.
It seems to open and close: first, to look outwards at the “wide landscape” and then to turn to the unconscious desires
where poetry – even the starkest war poetry – is generated. There’s a convalescent quality of memories
being reviewed in quiet darkness, and energies gathered.” Keith Douglas was considered the most talented –
and overlooked – poet of the Second World War.)
