Herbarium

There’s nothing better than the scent
of a child’s hair... only a dried violet
smells that way... only an unsure-blue
petal on the thin neck
of a stem… and like two shoulders,
two tiny leaves delicately glued together…

The best thing is the one that’s hardly noticeable —
because it is modest… here is, for example, a scent…
or childhood… or even death,
although its breath is nonetheless sweet,
demanding…

…Yesterday he read and painted,
today he played basketball
and the clarinet. Hundreds of usual chores
have almost bored him. More often
he thinks about barefoot wanderings
and the fresh wind drills as if it were a knife,
a fluted tunnel into the cosmic firmament.

Will God take the seed on a voyage
so rice and wheat will grow?
Will he put together in his pocket
a small animal and an innocent bird?
So that in a new unforeseen land
it will renew this earth’s nature
and, like a statuette on a table,
make the Person a reward?

…But more often his hand —
like a young boy’s or, maybe, an old man’s —
stops on a thick volume
in leather binding, where life
doesn’t have weight or feeling
or even sense. Where transparent paper
exposes on another piece of paper,
dried herbs, leaves, and flowers,
beauty like a memory, like a secret door,
a game of scents and lost thoughts.

HERBARIUM