Ode to a Cluster of Violets
- by Pablo Neruda -

Crisp cluster plunged in shadow.
Drops of violet water and raw sunlight floated up with your scent.
A fresh subterranean beauty climbed up from your buds thrilling my eyes and my life. 

One at a time, flowers that stretched forward silvery stalks,
creeping closer to an obscure light shoot by shoot in the shadows,
till they crowned the mysterious mass
with an intense weight of perfume
and together formed a single star
with a far-off scent and a purple center.

Poignant cluster intimate scent of nature,
you resemble a wave, or a head of hair,
or the gaze of a ruined water nymph sunk in the depths.
But up close, in your fragrance’s blue brazenness,
you exhale the earth, an earthly flower, an earthen
smell and your ultraviolet gleam in volcanoes’ faraway fires. 

Into your loveliness I sink a weathered face,
a face that dust has often abused.
You deliver something out of the soil.
It isn’t simply perfume, nor simply the perfect cry of your entire color,no: it’s
a word sprinkled with dew, a flowering wetness with roots. 

Fragile cluster of starry violets, tiny, mysterious planet
of marine phosphorescence, nocturnal bouquet nestled in green leaves: the truth is there is no blue word to express you.

Better than any word is the pulse of your scent.

from Odes to Common Things  translated by Ken Krabbenhoft, Bullfinch Press, 1994

There are also a Pink, Yellow and White wild violets here in Wales