"The Ware Collection of Glass Flowers and Fruit, Harvard Museum"

                   by Mark Doty



Strange paradise, complete with worms,

monument of an obsessive will to fix forms;

every apricot or yellow spot's seen so closely,

in these blown blooms and fruit, that exactitude

is not quite imitation. Leaf and root,

the sweet flag's flaring bud already,

at the tip, blackened; it's hard to remember

these were ballooned and shaped by breath

they're lovely because they seem

to decay; blue spots on bluer plums,

mold tarring a striped rose. I don't want to admire

the glassblower's academic replica,

his copies correct only to a single sense.

And why did a god so invested in permanence

choose so fragile a medium, the last material

he might expect to last? Better prose

to tell the forms of things, or illustration.

Though there's something seductive in this impossibility:

transparent color telling the live mottle of peach,

the blush or tint of crab, englobed,

gorgeous, edible. How else match that flush?

He's built a perfection out of hunger,

fused layer upon layer, swirled until

what can't be swallowed, won't yield

almost satisfies, an art

mouthed to the shape of how soft things are,

how good, before they disappear