Flowers, you who end in close affinity to the arrangers’ hands
(Hands of girls then, hands of girls now),
You who cover the garden table from end to end,
Grown weak, gently injured,

Waiting for water which revives you once more
From a death already commenced - and now
Again taken up between the opposing, sorting
Fingers and their feeling of you, and which can so well

Show you favour, give ease more than you had imagined,
As you recover yourselves in a jug,
Cooling slowly, and the ardour of the girls like confessions

Given up by you, seeping forth like muddy and tiresome sins
You committed by being plucked, - these are another tie between you,
So joined in alliance by both your blossomings.