No flower was white before this

Managed to pick up quite a few, good second-hand books during last weekend's trip to Glasgow ... this one (as pictured) is a 2005 edition of New Zealand (landscape) poetry, which I'd never seen before.

And, here's a poem by Lauris Edmond, from within:


September

The mountain leaps, and stands
breaking horizons. It is the first
land out of falling waters, the wind

finds it like a discovering dove.
In the wheeling light it is still,
construing containment, poise
from the inchoate idiom of the earth.

No flower was white before this
blossoming of snow, no September
sharp with spring until this morning.
I shall learn the lesson of God
from the mountain; it has entered
my imagination: eternal indifference,
eternal scope, eternal reprieve.

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Lauris Edmond (1924 - 2000)

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