The Tulip

I am the flame which on creation’s dawn was kindled in love’s heart before the nightingale and the moth came to play their sacrificial part.

I am far bigger than the sun, and pour into each atom’s core a potion of my light: I lend my spark to everyone, and it was I who made the heavens so bright.

Residing like its life-breath in the garden’s breast, in pristine rest, I was drawn up into its bosom by a tree-stem, delicate and thin, as sap that rises up towards the sky.

It quenched my inner fire and, wanting to beguile me, it said, ‘Stay awhile, and don’t go out into the day’; but my heart’s long-repressed desire could brook no more delay.

I writhed and writhed within the tree, encaged, enraged, until the essence of my being found its way to summits of the ecstasy of self-display.

With its pearls of the purest water dew bestrewed my way, as if to say, ‘O what a glorious birth!’ The morning laughed its brightest hue: the breezes blew in hymeneal mirth.

The nightingale heard from the rose that I had thrown away my own primordial consuming flame. It said, because this crowned its woes, ‘He paid a heavy price to thrive. For shame!’

I now stand by my breast rent open to the sun’s effulgence so that it may set ablaze again the fire of my prenatal days.