Poetry Day - 150,000 crocuses

I've told you that Judith Beveridge is teaching the poetry course I am doing, so here is one of her poems, from here. I chose this one mostly because it is shorter, and I know blog readers, but you might like to read some of her others also.

The Saffron Picker

It is necessary to pick 150,000 crocuses

in order to produce one kilogram of saffron.

Soon, she’ll crouch again above each crocus,

feel how the scales set by fate, by misfortune

are an awesome tonnage: a weight opposing

time. Soon, the sun will transpose its shadows

onto the faces of her children. She knows

equations: how many stigmas balance each

day with the next; how many days divvy up

the one meal; how many rounds of a lustrous

table the sun must go before enough yellow

makes a spoonful heavy. She spreads a cloth,

calls to the competing zeroes of her children’s

mouths. An apronful becomes her standard —

and those purple fields of unfair equivalence.

Always that weight in her apron: the indivisible

hunger that never has the levity of flowers.

Judith Beveridge

Photo from: http://www.profumo.it/images/foto_grandi/saffron.jpg