"There was a rose called "Guy de Maupassant."
A carmine pink that smelled like a Granny Smith.
And there was another from the 17th century that wept too
much in wilted when you looked.
And one that caused tuberculosis,
doctors dug them up, they wore white masks
and posted warnings in the windows.
One wet day and started to hail and pellets
the size of snowballs fell in the roses.
It's hard for me to look at a Duchess of Windsor,
it was worn by Franco and Mussolini, it stabbed Jews.
Yesterday, I bought six roses from a Haitian
on Lower Broadway, he wrapped them in blue tissue paper.
It was starting to snow and both of us had on the wrong shoes.
It was wind, he said, not snow that ruined roses and all
you had to do was hold them against your chest.
He had a ring on his pinkie the size of a grape
and half his teeth were gone.
So I loved him and spoke to him in false Creole for which
he hugged me, and enveloped me in his camel hair coat
with most of the buttons missing,
and we were brothers for life we swore it in French."