Sonnet of the Death of the Man who Invented the Plastic Rose

The man who invented the plastic rose 

is dead. Behold his mark: 

his undying flawless blossoms never close

but guard his grave unbending through the dark.

He understood neither beauty nor flowers,

which catch our hearts in nets as soft as sky

and bind us with a thread of fragile hours:

flowers are beautiful because they die.

Beauty without the perishable pulse

is dry and sterile, an abandoned stage

with false forests. But the results

support this man's invention; he knew his age:

a vision of our tearless time discloses

artificial men sniffing plastic roses.

Peter Meinke