Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

The lilies were sick.

I was new and wifely,

a first tiny garden and

my favourite flower right

by the back door.

They had been planted

in raised beds, all

self-conscious in

their outsized whiteness.

For weeks they seemed

fine, but then I noticed

a kind of injury, perforations

on the petals and a black

sticky gob-

the fly’s excrement.

I cleaned them up as best I could

but the blight returned.

In the dark with the kitchen lit

they must have peered in,

their occultish and hurting faces

pressed against the glass.

They were hard to love back,

these flowers.

I gave them nothing else,

spared them my gaze.

Those poor dazed heads.

I suppose I could have

pulled up their sick stems

or poisoned them from the bottle.

But I let them live on

beauty-drained

in their altar beds.