After Louise Glück’s Mock Orange

It is the delusion that comes first, I tell you.
Not the wild geraniums
in the untended vale.

It is the delusion that germinates,
persists, telling us
We can be happy as a couple,
spreading its strangling roots
well into our later years.
You would say of us now
I’m not unhappy with our marriage,
and that would be enough for you.

Consider, instead,
the wild geranium, whose essence
is subtle, as though it were
holding something back
out of fear or, perhaps,
coyness.

On the moraine
it is easy to overlook them:
they’re weedy, close to the ground,
they do not announce themselves.

One must make the effort
to identify them,
to kneel on the earth,
to bend close to their petals,
sinking one’s nose into their loose corymbs
to detect the discreet fragrance
that has been there all along.
What is it? Ah ... sweet lemons!

Why do I love that odor?
Why such elation
that this scent
survives in our world?