The Rose The rose is obsolete but each petal ends in an edge, the double facet cementing the grooved columns of air --- The edge cuts without cutting meets --- nothing --- renews itself in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. William Carlos Williams (VII of "Spring and All")