The Half-Mown Meadow
I walked in a half-mown flowering meadow by the sea's- / Edge of the grass, where yesterday the mower went.
Deaths of Flowers
❦
I would if I could choose
Age and die outwards as a tulip does;
Not as this iris drawing in, in-coiling
Its complex strange taut inflorescence, willing
Itself a bud again - though all achieved is
No more than a clenched sadness,
The tears of gum not flowing.
I would choose the tulips reckless way of going;
Whose petals answer light, altering by fractions
From closed to wide, from one through many perfections,
Til wreched, flamboyant, strayed beyond recall,
Like flakes of fire they piecemeal fall.
More poems by Edith Joy Scovell
A Dark World
Under the pent-house branches the eight swans have come, / Into the black-green water round the roots of the yew;