He said no women ever walk with flowers anymore.
He was from a land far away,
the Motherland, the Moon.
How exotic, I thought...
And while adding this meaningless task
to some To Do list or other,
I sensed
How tragic,
to be strolling along
whilst this beauteous thing,
dies in the clutches of my sweaty palms;
strangled and spent,
plucked and perished,
wilted while walking...
And I remember,
I smiled wide,
at this vainglorious vision,
thinking all the while,
Boris, what a meaningful, exquisitely beautiful thing.
*Boris Pasternak, who noted in an informal/formal interview published in “The Paris Review Interviews series Writers at Work, 2nd series” the first line in this poem as a casual observation whilst walking with the interviewer/writer Olga Annenkov.
Image credit By Florida Memory [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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