It’s spring, the time of irises; and today, for many, it is a day of resurrection and rebirth. That’s why I want to share this short poem by American poet Louise Glück, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020.
The Wild Irises (1992) explores the transition between suffering and renewal. The flowers voice both the anguish of dormancy and the astonishment of resurrection, serving as a metaphor for our capacity to emerge from silence and despair into light and expression.
It’s a haunting and beautiful poem.
The Wild Irises
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.
What is it about irises that inspires such profound creativity?
I’m thinking of the painting by Vincent Van Gogh. In this striking work of art, the bold, swirling, chaotic blooms burst with life and resilience, symbolizing hope and the beauty in a world beset by turmoil.
I referenced Irises (1889) in my recent novel Still Life, when the narrator, Vincent, also a painter, says to a friend, “. . . Even the paintings he did of irises, you can see those flowers and stalks straining the borders of sanity. . .” Sometimes it was Vincent himself straining those borders.
