1/8

bodymind

Clown on the Moon (Dylan Thomas Poem)

My tears fall softly like petals
of some magical rose.
And all my pain flows from open space
of firmaments and snows impossible to remember.

I believe that if I caressed the earth,
it would disintegrate;
yes, everything is so sad and so beautiful,
as tremulous as in a dream.

2/8

bodymind

The Prayer of the Roses (Poem by Federico García Lorca)

Bird roses, solemn stars!
Roses, roses, living jewels of infinity;
mouths, breasts and vague perfumed souls;
cries, kisses! grains, pollen of the moon;
sweet lotuses of stagnant souls;
pink bird, solemn stars!

Friends of poets
and from my heart,
bird roses, stars
of luminous Zion!
Panidas, yes, Panidas;
the tragic Rubén
That’s what he called in his verses
to the languid Verlaine,
that was bloody rose
and yellow at the same time.
Let me call you that,
Panidas, yes, Panidas,
essences of an Eden,
of dancing lips,
of women’s breasts.
You next to the marble
the blood is his,
but if you were smells
from the orchard
where fauns dwell,
you have in your being
a divine essence:

Mary of Nazareth,
that hides in your chests
whiteness of its honey;
unique and divine flower,
flower of God and Luzbel.

Eternal flower. Sigh spell.
Great, divine, enervating flower,
flower of faun and Christian virgin,
flower of furious and thundering Venus,
celestial and sedative Marian flower,
flower that is life and fountain blue
of youthful and arrogant love
that in its chalice clarifies its desires.

What would life be without roses!
A path without rhythm or blood,
an abyss without night or day.
They lend the soul their wings,
that without them the soul died,
without stars, without faith, without the clear ones
illusions that the soul wanted.

They are the refuge of many hearts
They are stars that feel love,
They are silences that slowly escaped
of the eternal nocturnal poet and dreamer,
and with air and with sky and with light they were formed,
That’s why all of them imitated at birth
the color and shape of our heart.
They are the women among all the flowers,
warm sancta sanctorum of eternal poetry,
great neáporis of every thought,
vials of perfume that the wind drinks blue,
chromatic swarms, pearls of feeling,
ornaments of lyres, poets without accent.
Smelly lovers of sweet nightingales.

Mothers of all that is beautiful,
you are eternal, magnificent, sad
like quiet October afternoons,
that when dying, melancholic, wandering,
an autumn night covers them,
because being as you are, poetry
you are full of autumn, of afternoons,
of regrets, of melancholy,
of sadness, of fatal loves,
of gray twilight of agony,
that you are sad, being poetry
which is a water from your rose bushes.
Holy divine roses and various,
hopes, desires, passion,
I trust in you, friends;
give me an empty chalice, already dead,
that in its depths, withered and deserted,
I will pour out my fatal heart.
Bird roses, solemn stars!
Roses full of grace and love,
all heaven and earth are yours
and blessed will be the teachers
May they proclaim the voice of your flower.
And blessed will be the beautiful fruit
of your beautiful solemn gospel,
and blessed is your perennial aroma,
and blessed your pale dawn.
Solitary, divine and serious,
sob, because you are flowers of love,
sob for the children who cut you,
sob to be a soul and to be a flower,
sob for bad poets
that they cannot sing to you with pain,
sob for the moon that loves you,
sob for so much heart
As in the shadows he listens to you quietly,
and also sob for my love.

Alas, carnal censers of the soul,
Chopinesque romances of scent,
sob for my hidden kisses
that my mouth gave to you.
Sob for the fog of the grave
where my big heart bleeds,
and in my hour of extinguished star,
let my eyes close to the sun,
be my white and severe shroud,

3/8

bodymind

The Perfect Rose (Poem by Dorothy Parker)

He’s only sent me one rose since we met.
He knew how to choose the messenger with great tenderness:
Deep, pure heart, with a few drops of fragrance still wet—
The perfect rose.

This is how I learned the language of that little flower that told me:
My fragile petals treasure a heart.
This love thus knew how to find its amulet in
The perfect rose.

I wonder why no one ever sent me instead
The perfect limousine. Could you tell me?
I know… my luck is cast, and I always have to receive only
The perfect rose.

4/8

bodymind

Sea Rose (Poems by Hilda Doolittle)

Rose, rough rose,
spoiled and with few petals,
lean, thin flower,
scarce of leaves,

most precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem
—subject to drift.

Stunted, with small leaves,
you are thrown into the sand,
you are raised
in the crunchy sand
that moves in the wind.

Can the rose that is spice
dripping so pungent fragrance
hardened into a sheet?

5/8

bodymind

Casida de la rosa (Poem by Federico García Lorca)

The rose
I was not looking for the dawn:
Almost eternal in its branch
I was looking for something else.
The rose

I was not looking for science or shadow:
Confine of flesh and dream
I was looking for something else.
The rose
I wasn’t looking for the rose:

Motionless through the sky
I was looking for something else!

6/8

bodymind

The mutable rose (Poem by Federico García Lorca)

When it opens in the morning.
red as blood is.
The dew does not touch her
because they are afraid of burning.

Open at noon
It is hard like coral.
The sun peeks through the windows
to see it shine.

When in the branches they begin
the birds to sing
and the afternoon faints
in the violets of the sea,
it turns white, with white
of a cheek of salt.

And when night comes
soft metal horn
and the stars advance
while the winds go away,
on the edge of darkness,
it begins to defoliate.

7/8

bodymind

To a rose (Poem by Góngora)

Yesterday you were born, and you will die tomorrow.
For such a brief being, who gave you life?
To live so little are you lucid?
And, to be nothing, are you fresh?

If her vain beauty deceived you,
very soon you will see it faded,
because it is hidden in your beauty
the chance to die an early death.

When I cut off your strong hand,
permitted agriculture law,
rude encouragement will end your luck.
Don’t go out, because some tyrant awaits you;

dilate your birth for life,
that you anticipate your being for your death.
Already kissing crystalline hands,
already tying itself to a white and smooth neck,

already spreading that hair over him
that Love brought out among the gold of his mines,
already breaking into those fine pearls
sweet words a thousand without merit,

already taking each beautiful lip
purple roses without fear of thorns,
I was, oh, clear, envious sun,
when your light, hurting my eyes,

He killed my glory and ended my luck.
If the sky is no longer less powerful,
so that your people do not become more angry,
Damn, like your son, they will kill you.

8/8

bodymind

The lover who speaks of the rose in his heart (WB Yeats poem)

All things ugly and broken, all things worn and old,
The cry of a child by the road, the creak of a loaded cart,
The heavy steps of the plowman over winter’s mold,
They are damaging your image that makes a rose sprout in the depths of my heart.

The evil of formless things is an evil too great to be told;
I long to create them again and sit far away on a green hill,
With the earth and the sky and the water, made again, like a little box of gold
For my dreams of your image that makes a rose sprout in the depths of my heart.