Redolent
I'm alone, I'm told,
And decorated in English script
With eyes available, with no claim to the words
But with flowers on flowers shipped
From Bogota's savanna
Helping me talk as one of a people
With occasions to mark, viscously rolling
About each other, having forgotten
The mannered European flower code,
The local eucalyptus,
Or bright dogs that range at night,
The ground floor of my position
Holds no dictionary or science
That can really name the flowers
I'm not pointing
Because they're so obviously opening
Even then, trying to stop
Being these people
I'm not along saying
Back something like "dark
of flowers" or "stones to swallow"
We're not inside the words
No interviews
____________________
Farid Matuk
Moon Mirrored Indivisible
University of Chicago Press, 2025
