Meditation Beside a Poem

​Amid the bubbling buzz of exotic itineraries we can sometimes forget that any holiday abroad is itself a relative privilege, and that each town nook and bedsit is no less sublime for being here.

Pandemic or not, staycation planning is the affordable norm for so many in this country and a matter of preference for those content to bask in the garden’s afterglow, as in this charmed reflection by Brazilian poet Adélia Prado:

Meditation Beside a Poem

I pruned the rosebush at precisely the right moment
and left town for days,
having learned once and for all
to wait biblically
for the time of every thing.
When I opened the window, there it was
as I’d never seen it before,
studded
with buds,
some already with pale rose
peeking out from between sepals,
clusters of living jewels.
My bad back,
my disappointment with the limits of time,
the enormous effort to be understood--
all turned to dust
before this recurrent miracle.
The cyclical, perceptible roses
made themselves marvellous.
No one can move me
from this sudden knowing
beyond the edge of reason:
mercy is intact.
Billowing greed,
pummelling fists,
high-pitched fury:
nothing can hold back the gold of corollas
or—believe me—fragrance.
Simply because it’s September.


​Born in 1935, Prado is one of Brazil’s most revered contemporary poets, and yet she rarely steps out and away from her native city of Divinópolis. Her deeply spiritual, if sometimes overtly religious work is a study in the simple devotions of domestic life. It’s telling here that her leaving town warrants so little fanfare on the page; rather, it serves only to bring us back to the rosebush and Prado’s deeper reflection. The poem serves as a gentle reminder, perhaps, that all the stunning wonder in the world is within our reach, here in the quiet hours of our every day.
​