-- John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
"Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires...."
-- Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning"
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I bought an artificial houseplant,
so new its green the kind of green--
leaf and stem, unwashed and unused to
soil and sunshine and soft
fickle nature of nature,
still-life, sedate, unchanging, unmoved--
it lacks only, it seems, a passion of life.
No need for watering this kind of plant,
with no deepening roots to drink the air,
no open-mouth yawn for sunlight,
no biology exploding deep unseen
in its burning furnace of life,
no miracle of science and wild.
I moved the plant from its place,
this false fern play-pretending at truth
turned a slight rotation only, a hairbreadth change of angle.
And it was then I saw
a spot--
a single black streak on leaf,
something colorless, shapeless,
an ungreen something
unplanned,
a mistake in design,
functionform
meaningless,
no defined purpose,
definition undefined.
Something real,
this spot,
left turned away from the sun now,
facing outward now
this stain,
this imperfection,
this blemish in production,
this reality,
the author's mark now
facing me.
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