Irises

Only he could see them clearly: the way
They curl their shadows close beneath their leaves, 
Cupping clefts of glacial cold—how they grow 
Out of the dead parts of themselves, new stalks 
To shade a former future grave, the way 
Their out-turned petals overflow the spathe’s
Green cup and spread through standard, sepal fall,
And style, then sway to overspill the vase
In tumbling violet waves of light, admixed 
Throughout with strokes of warm, infusing rot—
Smudged browns and yellows, thin wax-paper-wrought
Translucencies to cowl the brightest blades
And serve to draw their latent greenness out,
Until they buckle, sag, and bend on stems
As if some gravity in joy had broken them. 

He knew the way they hold the winter’s heart
Inside their bulbs, a cold engrafted shard
Against the root, and speak through spring in tongues 
Of ice of something that the coldest days 
Have left behind in stone and shade and frost—
How even cut and sagging in a vase,
They bore the windblown fields of Arles entire
In every bending bloom. He saw it then,
How all the wild bright riot of a life
Could hold this breathing stillness in a room.