Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' 8 May 2026

Poem The Rose is Absolete -below
 

My grandmother often told me “la ignorancia is atrevida” or ignorance is daring. In my many years (83) of existence I keep making my abuelita right.

In 1962 I was going to an American college (Mexico City College). One of the most boring classes (I was an idiot) was an oldish white-haired English professor who looked like Robert Frost and because he was his friend would tell us stories about him. I sat in the back row and yawned.

I had a good reason for my yawning as a friend, Roberto Hijar was studying art and he persuaded me to accompany him to the college darkroom from late evenings to early mornings. Robert taught me to develop film and to print it. He was most influential in making me a photographer.

When I started writing these blogs (6900 of them not including this one) in 2006 I had to find ways of placing my photographs (and later my plant scans) in them. That is when I discovered that they went just fine with poetry. I have written over 150 blogs related to Emily Dickinson, at least 100 related to Jorge Luís Borges and many more poets.

What this means is that later in my life I have become good in being able to tell people of my favourite poets.

If anything it proves that it is never too late to become cultured. One important event in that topic is that before 1991 I only read in English. A year later I went to Lima, Peru to interview and photograph Mario Vargas Llosa. I decided to read his complete output before taking my plane. I took out all his books from the UBC Library and somehow my reading Spanish returned. To this day I read at least one poem or story by Borges every night to stay in shape.

Because many blogs with poems,like this one, are connected to my plant scans I have to thank the influence of my wife Rosemary (she died 9 December, 2020) in  gently making me a gardener and then a member of the Vancouver Rose Society in 2001.

While I scanned the rose today Friday 8 May I am placing it on an early date to fill a blog hole. 

 The Rose is Obsolete - William Carlos Williams 1923

The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air--The edge
cuts without cutting
meets--nothing--renews
itself in metal or porcelain--

whither? It ends--

But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry--

Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica--
the broken plate
glazed with a rose

Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses--

The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end--of roses

It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits

Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness--fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching

What

The place between the petal's
edge and the

From the petal's edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact--lifting
from it--neither hanging
nor pushing--

The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space