Poetry

Set on bare board, these objects play at desolation:
Three candles raise black wicks to our habitual air,
Ceding no brightness to the scene. Some daffodils,
Still merely buds, are tied together with a thread,
Then each one bundled like a fist inside a cast,
In its own swaddling. Surely they will never open.
The articles are commonplace, yet they still attract.
They hint at a fertility that we grow sure of.
These things will honey the darkness at another time:
The daffodils unfurling at an unknown hour,
The candles newly kindled by a watchful hand.
Thin flames will try themselves on undiscovered faces
And fashion us a spectacle of flesh and petal.
But not now. Now we have barrenness, and enough.

James Najarian teaches at Boston College.