Thanks for Remembering Us - Dana Gioia
The flowers sent here by mistake,
signed with a name that no one knew,
are turning bad. What shall we do?
Our neighbor says they're not for her,
and no one has a birthday near.
We should thank someone for the blunder.
Is one of us having an affair?
At first we laugh, and then we wonder.
The iris was the first to die,
enshrouded in its sickly-sweet
and lingering perfume. The roses
fell one petal at a time,
and now the ferns are turning dry.
The room smells like a funeral,
but there they sit, too much at home,
accusing us of some small crime,
like love forgotten, ans we can't
throw out a gift we've never owned.
signed with a name that no one knew,
are turning bad. What shall we do?
Our neighbor says they're not for her,
and no one has a birthday near.
We should thank someone for the blunder.
Is one of us having an affair?
At first we laugh, and then we wonder.
The iris was the first to die,
enshrouded in its sickly-sweet
and lingering perfume. The roses
fell one petal at a time,
and now the ferns are turning dry.
The room smells like a funeral,
but there they sit, too much at home,
accusing us of some small crime,
like love forgotten, ans we can't
throw out a gift we've never owned.
posted by darkangel at 3:20 PM
1 Comments:
hi Caroline,
i really like this poem; how the first stanza eludes to the second so well. i love the imagery and metaphor of dying flowers to unpossessed love--it's so beautiful and tragic and incisive at the same time. i like how Gioia uses lots of detail to describe the process of dying beauty/love--i guess that's the most painful part of it all? anyways, in my opinion, i think she captures it so well b/c she almost makes an understatement of it all.
would love to read your modelled "Home" poem too!
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