Some Flowers (for Irving Howe)

In a world where you are asleep with your fathers,
in that part of the forest where trees read,
your tree still reads to us. Tonight your branches bend over
Conrad, Trotsky, Saba,
the evergreen Irish.

Joyce hated flowers,
his wife put a house plant on his grave.
There are no socialist flowers,
yet the balmiest wind favors
a more even distribution of wealth.
Some have seen among the flowers religious orders,
proved a rose a Chr...