Villanelle

Why’d it have to end? My daughter asks,
for how is she supposed to know –
a flower isn’t beautiful because it lasts.

The little world that fits inside her grasp
has only seen beginnings, roots and embryos.
And so she cries: It didn’t have to end so fast!

To eyes that Jupiter has still yet to pass,
if stands her house today, then so tomorrow.
But a flower isn’t beautiful because it lasts.

And now our cities crumble and go black; 
and before us lies a strange new road.
I feel it too – it didn’t have to end so fast.

Of light and dark this deathly cycle’s cast,
and hope may spring again from snow.
Still: a flower isn’t beautiful because it lasts.

It is late, and Eden sinks to grief at last.
A poet told me nothing stays that’s gold.
Oh, I wish it didn’t have to end so fast!
But a flower isn’t beautiful because it lasts.