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| Rosa 'Margaret Merril' & R. 'Susan Williams- Ellis' 9 October 2021 |
It seems that as fall gets colder, the roses I may have considered delicate are not so. There are Roses R. ‘Margaret Merril’ and R. ‘Susan Williams-Ellis’ taking their time to wish me goodbye until next year. Margaret Merril was her favourite white rose and while I purchased R. 'Susan Williams- Ellis' when she was alive, Rosemary never saw her achieve her prime as this English Rose did this 2021.
Like everything else that surrounds me in my little Kits home, these roses remind me of that other rose (how could it be that I never connected the rose part of her name?), my Rosemary.
Rosemary was always pleasantly thin and her grace hid the fact that she was a hardy kind of woman. For our second daughter’s birth (Hilary) she arranged the then accepted procedure of inducing birth. She arranged for Dr. deKanter to do so on a Friday so that she could have the child on the weekend and with all things considered she might be back at work on a Monday. I have no memory if that is what happened.
Another time when Rosemary was visibly 9 months pregnant (Alexandra was the child to come) we went shopping to the Mexican department store El Puerto de Liverpool. She was looking for short and very slim waistcoat dresses. The woman clerk told us that we were in the wrong department and that maternity was on another floor. Rosemary, who rarely showed off, bent over (with a smile on her face as she did not want to obviously show off) and touched the floor with the flats of her palms and said, “I am giving birth in a few days and I will need new dresses.”
I must believe that the only delicate feature that could be attached to my Rosemary was her delicate and snobbish good taste.
White and blue were her favourite garden flower colours with a third preference for gray plants.
This blue and white duality take me to my childhood in Buenos Aires when Mercedes, our live-in housekeeper, would wash white clothes in our patio and would use a little blue cube the size of an ice cube that was called azul. It must have been a primitive form of bleach.
The Argentine flag, it was drummed into us at school, was azul celeste (the colour of a pale sky) y blanco.
No skin is ever white on people who are supposed to be white. Of late I have used the colour temperature settings (in Degrees Kelvin) of my digital camera to get pale skin to be as I see it with the eye. In that century when photographic film had no competition it was almost impossible to get a true white that was not tinged by cyan or blue. Our present digital world has corrected that and white will be white.
As I scanned the white roses I thought of Rosemary and how she would have smiled to see them in bloom at this late a date.
Since I began to blog in January 2006 (5372 blogs including this one) I have enjoyed matching my images with literature of my choice particularly that of poets like Jorge Luis Borges, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Julio Cortázar, Mario Benedetti and Eduardo Galeano. I have also found many other perhaps more obscure (to me) writers that I could match with my photographs (and of late) and plant scans.
This poem by Léopold Sédar Senghor (former President of
Senegal and poet) was championed and read by Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano. I
will translate it into English below. This poem should in these times be better known in English.
Querido hermano blanco:
Cuando yo nací, era negro.
Cuando crecí, era negro.
Cuando me da el sol, soy negro.
Cuando estoy enfermo, soy negro.
Cuando muera, seré negro.
Y mientras tanto, tú, hombre blanco,
Cuando naciste, eras rosado.
Cuando creciste, fuiste blanco.
Cuando te da el sol, eres rojo.
Cuando sientes frío, eres azul.
Cuando sientes miedo, eres verde.
Cuando estás enfermo, eres amarillo.
Cuando mueras, serás gris.
Dear white brother
When I was born, I was black.
When I grew, I was black.
When the sun hits me, I am black.
When I am sick, I am black.
When I die, I will be black.
Meanwhile, you, white man,
When you were born, you were pink.
When you grew, you were white.
When the sun hits you, you are red.
When you feel cold, you are blue.
When you are afraid, you are green.
When you are sick you are yellow.
When you die you will be gray.
Then, which one of us is a man of colour?
Another poem that mentions the colour white in an almost negative way Design is by Robert Frost:
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
And then there is Argentine feminist poem Alfonsina Storni’s You want me white (poem in Spanish and then in English):
Tú Me Quieres Blanca
Tú me quieres alba,
Me quieres de espumas,
Me quieres de nácar.
Que sea azucena
Sobre todas, casta.
De perfume tenue.
Corola cerrada
Ni un rayo de luna
Filtrado me haya.
Ni una margarita
Se diga mi hermana.
Tú me quieres nívea,
Tú me quieres blanca,
Tú me quieres alba.
Tú que hubiste todas
Las copas a mano,
De frutos y mieles
Los labios morados.
Tú que en el banquete
Cubierto de pámpanos
Dejaste las carnes
Festejando a Baco.
Tú que en los jardines
Negros del Engaño
Vestido de rojo
Corriste al Estrago.
Tú que el esqueleto
Conservas intacto
No sé todavía
Por cuáles milagros,
Me pretendes blanca
(Dios te lo perdone),
Me pretendes casta
(Dios te lo perdone),
¡Me pretendes alba!
Huye hacia los bosques,
Vete a la montaña;
Límpiate la boca;
Vive en las cabañas;
Toca con las manos
La tierra mojada;
Alimenta el cuerpo
Con raíz amarga;
Bebe de las rocas;
Duerme sobre escarcha;
Renueva tejidos
Con salitre y agua;
Habla con los pájaros
Y lévate al alba.
Y cuando las carnes
Te sean tornadas,
Y cuando hayas puesto
En ellas el alma
Que por las alcobas
Se quedó enredada,
Entonces, buen hombre,
Preténdeme blanca,
Preténdeme nívea,
Preténdeme casta.
You want me white (English) translated by Catherine Fountain
You want me to be the dawn
You want me made of seaspray
Made of mother-of-pearl
That I be a lily
Chaste above all others
Of tenuous perfume
A blossom closed
That not even a moonbeam
Might have touched me
Nor a daisy
Call herself my sister
You want me like snow
You want me white
You want me to be the dawn
You who had all
The cups before you
Of fruit and honey
Lips dyed purple
You who in the banquet
Covered in grapevines
Let go of your flesh
Celebrating Bacchus
You who in the dark
Gardens of Deceit
Dressed in red
Ran towards Destruction
You who maintain
Your bones intact
Only by some miracle
Of which I know not
You ask that I be white
(May God forgive you)
You ask that I be chaste
(May God forgive you)
You ask that I be the dawn!
Flee towards the forest
Go to the mountains
Clean your mouth
Live in a hut
Touch with your hands
The damp earth
Feed yourself
With bitter roots
Drink from the rocks
Sleep on the frost
Clean your clothes
With saltpeter and water
Talk with the birds
And set sail at dawn
And when your flesh
Has returned to you
And when you have put
Into it the soul
That through the bedrooms
Became entangled
Then, good man,
Ask that I be white
Ask that I be like snow
Ask that I be chaste