Name Of The Rose

Name Of The Rose
© Surazeus
2026 06 07

The bald-head man with glasses and mustache 
adjusts tweed jacket and laces work boots, 
then sweeps huge pile of old discarded books, 
heaped on rain-slick sidewalk, against brick wall 
next to glass door of some abandoned bank, 
lamenting how knowledge of the past gets lost. 

"I cannot decide what to name the Rose," 
he muses while staring with rain-blurred eyes 
at tattered covers of paperback novels 
that depict bitter women in torn dresses 
and angry men with guns and loosened ties, 
"since the girl from the village is my mother." 

When he was young student in art history 
forty years ago at the university, 
he traveled to Italy for the summer 
where he climbed the steep Stairway of the Dead 
to find lost book that Aristotle wrote 
hidden in gloomy Abbey of Saint Michael. 

One cover shows corpulent businessman, 
in blue suit and red tie, wearing a blond wing, 
whose face resembles the ravenous pig, 
so he remembers how Odysseus 
was wounded by sharp horn of a wild boar 
while hunting on slopes of Mount Porcorianus. 

Greedy tyrants who clutch with manic fear 
at transient illusions of fiscal power, 
elusive as Hound of the Baskervilles, 
since Hugo was cursed for kidnapping women, 
attempt to burn the sweet innocent girl 
because she laughs at their frail vanity. 

Residing in lush Garden of Delight, 
the Girl from the Village with golden hair, 
tends delicate rosebud of her thorned bush 
while her train of nymphs wearing flower wreaths, 
named Chastity, Danger, Reason, and Shame, 
play with elegant grace in stone-rimmed pool. 

The Lover wearing clothes of Everyman 
gazes entranced in Fountain of Narcissus 
where reflection of Rosebud sparks true love 
to blossom with desire from aching heart, 
as if sharp arrow pierces him with hope, 
so his voice echoes with Name of the Rose. 

Adjusting tattered books on metal shelf, 
the balding hippie with glasses and boots 
sells them to passing strangers for one penny, 
then visits grave of his wife, Rose Marie, 
who died from cancer twenty years ago, 
and cries how beauty of this world is lost.