Flowers of Darkness
by Frank Marshall Davis

Slowly the night blooms, unfurling
Flowers of darkness, covering
The trellised sky, becoming
A bouquet of blackness
Unending
Touched with sprigs
Of pale and budding stars

Soft the night smell
Among April trees
Soft and richly rare
Yet commonplace
Perfume on a cosmic scale

I turn to you Mary Lou
I see the flowering night
Cameo condensed
Into the lone black rose
Of your face
The young woman-smell
Of your poppy body
Rises to my brain as opium

Yet silently motionless
I sit with twitching fingers
Yea, even reverently
Sit I
With you and the blossoming night
For what flower, plucked
Lingers long?