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ELEGY ROSES Our own life’s a burial place . . . —Garry Wills on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance When, in that most tender of Ford’s sorrows, Tom sends Hallie the cactus rose, The film—which is flashback and elegy And halfway to its end—rests momentarily In close-up of the paddle-shaped plant Blossoming at evening above the sand. Even there it looks like something meant for The grave, makeshift and marker, As if to point the way. Later, when Tom burns Down the house he’s been building for her, The rooms flower with his grief, The great dark billows of those flames. Today in the garden, beside the bench I built So you might rest your stricken bones, I tamp the earth back about the roses I’ve planted, already budding there— Parade roses, cardinal red, which because hybrid And domestic will need extra tending. 55 Something else to try to keep from dying, Clustered and cut to size. After the transplant, I remember writing Now we begin the long hard work of recovery, A kind of spring I believed in As accompaniment to the year. It’s spring again And everything casts back your absence— Cactus and petal, rose and stem and cell. 56 ...

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