The Secret Rose
Somewhere unknown there grows
A multifoliate rose
Whose petals are arranged
In symmetries unchanged
By vagaries of time.
Its pattern is sublime:
It makes geometry
A form of artistry
And all the petals hold
A single dewdrop, rolled
Into a perfect ball—
Each one reflecting all.
Each petal on the rose
Contains itself a rose
And so on, endlessly—
Up to infinity.
To hold that rose in mind
Too long, would turn you blind.
It lasts a while in sight
And then dissolves in light.
Eulagisca Gigantea
It lives beneath the icy shores
Of cold Antarctica’s domain.
It scuffs along the ocean floors:
A pleated worm, with golden mane.
But underneath its shining pleats
That give the worm its golden sheen
Are horrid jaws, with which it eats—
A sight you’ll wish you’d never seen!
It is as if the Golden Fleece
Which Jason and his fellows sought
Revealed a set of shining teeth
To bite the hand by which it’s caught.
Luke Perera is a poet from Gibraltar, who has lived in Gibraltar, England, and the Philippines. He was included in the Anthology of Contemporary Gibraltar Poets (2019). He has recently begun sharing work on Substack, under the name Metrical Poet.
As they used to say in the 1960’s, “Far out, Man!” Comparing a hitherto unknown (at least to me) underwater Antarctic worm with golden pleats to the golden fleece of Jason using excellent rhyme was a fascinating read.
This is a clever pairing: a poem about something beautiful, and a poem about something horrible. The first is in strict trimeter, which runs for just the right length (20 lines) to be bearable. The second is in tetrameter, and does solid justice to this unpleasant sea creature in three concise quatrains (quite enough). I agree with Roy: linking this worm with an allusion to the story of the Golden Fleece is unexpected and jarring, but also fascinating in its strangeness. It’s what fictive mimesis does best.
A Fan of the rose poem, it reminds me of Donald Sidney-Fryer’s poetry, if a bit sharper. The ending line is particularly tasteful.
Luke, “The Secret Rose” must be your signature poem as Substack’s “Metrical Poet.” It’s no description of a flower, as it quickly moves to imagine a vision that might be called an infinite and symmetric anthology (“anthology” being understood as “gathering of flowers”). I like the mathematical and geometric thinking in which you lead the reader. Not quite possible to follow logically, as it has to proceed in three dimensions. Maybe four dimensions, if you would call time the fourth. However, the pattern is “unchanged by vagaries of time.” Rather, there’s an endless multidimensionality suggested by each petal itself containing a rose of the same secret kind. This is not sensory but mythic or mystic. The final dissolution into light implies motion from matter into energy.
Your “Eulagisca Gigantea” starts off as another real thing (from the animal kingdom) that swims into myth via metaphor. Most enjoyable work!
I enjoyed both poems, Luke, especially “The Secret Rose” with its beautiful graphic.
I truly appreciate the approaches you take in your poems. Both poems are immensely intriguing, especially Eulagisca Gigantea, which is my favorite of the two.
Two wonderful poems, Luke. The Secret Rose I found rather Carroll-esqe, encompassing as it does a familiar object given an almost mathematical make-over and becoming unfamiliar through the revealed imagery.
Eulagisca Gigantea reminds us not to judge a book by its cover, but in reverse, the cover here being beautiful, but beneath hiding a horror.
Thanks for the reads.
Luke, this is my first time reading your work and I loved the musicality and imagery presented in both. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you all for your comments, I am glad the poems have been read & enjoyed. You will find more poems in the same style on Substack: https://metricalpoet.substack.com/ . Some of the poems have audio readings.
For a little background to “The Secret Rose”, you might enjoy this short article with a selection of poems from a few canonical poets: https://metricalpoet.substack.com/p/roses-a-miscellany
One detail that might go unappreciated: the dewdrops on the rose petals, which each reflect the rest and contain a rose in a kind of fractal pattern, is inspired by an image from Buddhist literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net
The animal described in Eulagisca Gigantea is also known as the Antarctic scale worm. I am no biologist, and learnt of this animal from a Youtube video. It immediately lodged in my mind as worthy of a poem… the golden mane, the grotesque maw, and the exotic but forbidding setting of the Antarctic seas.
Enjoyable descriptions. I like the mise en abyme effect of each petal of the rose containing its own rose, up to infinity. “A rose is a rose is a rose…”.
Looking at some images of “Eulagisca Gigantea”, I find the analogy to the Golden Fleece very apt.