Kyushu Hydrangea
Some might say there are too many
for a charity hospital, too many pale
pink blossoms opening into creamy
paler ones, just when everything else
is dying in the garden. They can't see
the huge, upright panicles correspond
to something else, something not external at all,
but its complement, that atmosphere of pure
unambiguous light burning inwardly,
not in self-regard but in self-forgetting;
they can't see the lush rainy-season flowers,
with feet planted partially in rock,
lifting their big solemn heads over
the verdant wounded hands of the leaves.
– Henri Cole
from Middle Earth (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003)