Flowers in Translation

The beautiful saints held lilies;

preserved by death, plaster, paint or, most precious,

stamped into metal and tied with ribbon around your neck,

those dewy-eyed paragons were our celebrities

and the arum their emblem.

Meditation on those callas teased you towards your end,

so poisonous you ran past their waxy beauty

lurking by the swamp, but

you could not stop yourself imagining

crunching up their bitter, carroty hearts.

You held your breath past the pampas we called toetoe,

as inhalation of their fluffy dust

might clog your lungs and

leave you too breathless to slide over the quicksand

as you prayed the tiger wave would not strike today.

Kowhai grew by the veranda steps,

you plucked golden petals from a flower in one

to drink liquid honey from the fairy cup left behind;

only now you learn of its deadly properties, the explanation

for those unexpected encounters with the dark terror of the night.

Pohutukawa were the colour of Christmas,

red against green, abundant

as befits the season of over-indulgence,

they cost us nothing so

we had no understanding of our wealth.

Violets are what devoted daughters give their mothers,

you looked but never found one, until back in England; and

on that morning, closing her door behind you for the last time,

they had pushed through the chill February earth, and

you drove past her childhood fields that once had been

filled with the promise of buttercup summers.