The Crippled Girl, The Rose

It was as if a flower bloomed as if Its muttering root and stem had suddenly spoken, Uttering on the air a poem of summer, The rose the utterance of its root and stem. Thus her beautiful face, the crippled girl’s, Was like the poem spoken by her body— The richness of that face!—most generous In what it keeps, giving in its having. The rose reserves the sweetness that it yields, Petal on petal, telling its own silence, Her beauty saying from its thorny stalk That what it is is kept as it is given.