Robert Lee Frost

Pod of the Milkweed

 Calling all butterflies from every race
 From source unknown but no special place
 They ever will return to all their lives,
 Because unlike the bees they have no hives
 The milkweed brings up to my very door
 The theme of wanton waste in peace and war
 As it has never been to me before.
 And so it seems a flower’s coming out
 That should if not be talked then sung about.
 The countless wings that from the infinite
 Make such a noiseless tumult over it
 Do no doubt with their color compensate
 For what the drab weed lacks of the ornate.
 For drab it is its fondest must admit.
 And yes, although it is a flower that flows
 With milk and honey, it is bitter milk,
 As anyone who ever broke its stem
 And dared to taste the wound a little knows.
 It tastes as if it might be opiate.
 But whatsoever else it may secrete,
 Its flowers distilled honey is so sweet
 It makes the butterflies intemperate.
 There is no slumber in its juice for them
 One knocks another off from where he clings.
 They knock the dyestuff off each other’s wings—
 With thirst on hunger to the point of lust.
 They raise in their intemperance a cloud
 Of mingled butterfly and flower dust
 That hangs perceptibly above the scene.
 In being sweet to these ephemerals
 The sober weed has managed to contrive
 In our three hundred days and sixty-five
 One day too sweet for beings to survive.
 Many shall come away as struggle-worn
 And spent and dusted off of their regalia,
 To which at daybreak they were freshly born,
 As after one-of-them’s proverbial failure
 From having beaten all day long in vain
 Against the wrong side of a windowpane.

 But waste was of the essence of the scheme.
 And all the good they did for man or god
 To all those flowers they passionately trod
 Was leave as their posterity one pod
 With an inheritance of restless dream.
 He hangs on upside down with talon feet
 In an inquisitive position odd
 As any Guatemalan parakeet.
 Something eludes him.
 Is it food to eat?
 Or some dim secret of the good of waste?
 He almost has it in his talon clutch.
 Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone
 That science may have staked the future on?
 He seems to say the reason why so much
 Should come to nothing must be fairly faced.