There is a wild flower growing
Inside a broken vase,
On a mantle in my memory.
This flower will die
When you are dead,
And while you live will grow.
Because each petal and its stem
Is like long years, of waiting and of hope,
So useless and so void.
From: Rexroth, Kenneth (ed.), The New British Poets: An Anthology, 1940, New Directions: New York, p. 301.
(https://archive.org/details/newbritishpoets030038mbp)
Date: 1940
By: Paul Hugh Howard Potts (1911-1990)