By Richard Mather
We have before us only the one,
unchangeable Idea of the plant - Schopenhauer
Not the growing stem or the leaf blowing
in the wind; not the opening bud
or the emerging radicle; not the fourfold root
yearning for water, but the flower’s
eternal concept, its pure form.
Not the jetfire daffodil on the windowsill
or the polyantha in the rosarium,
but Flower as Platonic Idea abstracted
from temporal and spatial relations
like ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘before’, ‘after’.
Certainly not Schopenhauer’s restless Wille,
which does not weary in its drive
to show itself in multitudinous forms,
its sugary sap striving amidst the phenomena
of wind, heat, deluge, frost.
II
If beauty is unity of form without decay
then look not to Nature but to Art
like Piet Mondrian’s Amaryllis,
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Black Iris.
Pure artefacts never become other
than themselves. Their scent
is the air of a well-ventilated room
in fragrant galleries and museums.
We queue to look; we stand, we wait.
If permitted to touch, glass meets
our fingers. Knowing subjects,
we meditate on inert forms.
Such paintings are still life
but life redeemed from nature’s spoils.
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