White RoseAuthor(s): Marianne BoruchSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1987), p. 65Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20156391 .

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Five Poems Marianne Boruch

White Rose

Once this rose knew too much.

Our grandmothers moved easily among its small rooms

and radiant furniture, our grandmothers as stubborn girls again, hoarding us inside them

in clusters, grape by grape, saying things like: not me. I'll never be a mother.

Of course no one believes such truth.

The rose is a liar anyway, its fabulous perfume

proof?though even the mailman, his eyes

like tiny hardened cranberries, slows past its ornate

staged longing for a moment

sweetened, like a glass of new milk.

Then the June solstice falls.

The rose knows how long it's been summer: a few weeks,

a whole lifetime. Its scent is a coined word by now

for confusion, for misery, for love. It leans back

against its stem like a spoiled daughter anxious to please only the boy who wouldn't dream

of touching her. Slowly the street quiets.

It is barely light. Stars fill the sky several as thorns.

65

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