The Futile Bouquet

 by Brett Rutherford

    after Li Yu, Poem 23 

There is a forest flower
I love, found only
one week of the Spring
in just one shady wooded spot.

I go with poets there,
and painters, and each of us
attempt to catch
    that flower’s essence.

Today my servants
have brought me some:
ripped from their soil,
poor droopy things
they are, the red
already gone to orange,
the petals withering,
stalks oozing milky white.

Kidnapped flowers,
what ransom can I give,
what favor confer
on the violated forest?

A wine I know
has the same vermilion hue.
Tears of the grape? My tears
that ought to be my blood?

Send wine! Call in
some poets to console me.
Find some drear song
to fiddle me to sleep.

Life is now a misery.
Onward it carries me
eastward against my will
with the relentless floods.