A Display

Still Life of Flowers: roses, tulips, a sunflower and other flowers in a glass vase with a bee, butterfly and other insects upon a marble ledge

Rachel Ruysch (Dutch, 1664-1750)

Original painting is not black and white. Adjusted for thematic purposes.

Learn more about this piece.

Music pairing: Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Piano and Viola No.4, Op 11:1. Phantasie

I drop my head to declare —

If only I wasn’t cut premature,

If only I wasn’t choked to bloom and to be a picture,

Perhaps I could stand tall for a few more hours,

Revel in spotlight plenty thereafter.

But the sun blazing,

The draft parching,

The water unmoving —

Everything and nothing measured.

The greenhouse where I was grown,

In temperate weather cultivated;

All optimum, precise, and standardized —

Treatment, care, the exact humidity in the air.

How ever could I last outside, how ever could I thrive?

How ever does a greenhouse flower survive,

Without a keeper who listens,

Without a keeper who knows every need,

In same language speak?

Rooted in this vase,

Here is where I’ll rot.

I drop my head to declare —

Let me break my own stem,

Then let those around condemn.