I clutched a rose tightly;
It's aroma delighting:
Heaven was mine that sweet day.
But the perfume soon faded,
And my joy was traded
For pain... my flower Had thorns.
And The rose's red paled
To that of my own
Which had spill'd out upon the stain'd floor.
Nepenthean fragrance: gone in an instant;
my stigmata, a permanent sore.
Now flowers are serpents,
That I dare not to grasp:
"And they bloom 'at my heel'"
"'And I cudgel' the asp."
For I squeezed far too tightly,
When sweet Aphrodite
Gave my first flower,
Which would be my last.