I was never bothered by the rose. Some people talk about it all the time. It fades, it blooms. They see it in visions, they have it, they miss it. I made some small efforts to worry about the rose but they never amounted to much. I don’t think you should do those things to a flower. They don’t exist anyhow. The garden doesn’t exist either. Believe me, these things stand in the way. I was with a man when he actually saw the rose. He said his mother was standing at the centre of it. I went to war with the rose on my banner but I didn’t fight very well. The rose has never eluded me. It’s the most natural thing to see it burning in the air in front of me like a little fire in the middle of a sheet of paper, a bright hole with blackened edges. Sometimes it floats over my right shoulder like a red umbrella. It has four green leaves at the cardinal points. It claims to sponsor these lines. It is a very modest claim but it stands in the way. It was granted to me to discard the authority of the rose. Between the cheeks it still has its terrors. These are harmless conventions. I smell the fragrance. It has even filled up my car on the highway far from any flower bed. I can feel the thorns if I want to move my hand that carelessly. All this is perfectly natural. Sometimes the rose occupies the opening of the far end of a tunnel. I never allow this to dignify my approach. They are continually hovering in windows and other apertures which attract light or desire. They are usually perceived one at a time and while the petals may undulate the centre is still. I never greet the rose and I never ask it to represent an idea or a woman. I find this stands in the way. Everywhere I discover men speaking to the rose. It does not improve their ordinary conversation. Then there is the wound like a rose. This is a particularly nauseating conception. The rose-wound. The petals are made of blood and the energy is made of pain. One of these dwells under my white shirt. There are three roses in my room right now and another trying to establish me as its centre. These are interfering dreams. Don’t trouble yourself to brush them aside. You wouldn’t know how to do it anyway, and they would probably install themselves on the floor near your feet in theatrical attitudes of agony and neglect.