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Common myrtle

Myrte commun - الآس

Description

This typically Mediterranean flowering shrub can live up to 300 years! It has highly aromatic evergreen leaves and dark blue berries. For the Greeks and Romans it symbolized love and was associated with the goddess Aphrodite/Venus.

Poem

A Tree’s Heart

For a tree to have a heart, it need not beat
In a likeness of our own,
Nor hide away in some dark chamber,
Confined within the trunk.

And yet, the tree has a heart.
Along each living fiber it stretches –
Drawing and sending, with a rhythmic pulse –
The sap and vital force for its survival.

From the deep earth it pumps water
To the tips of its roots and the vibrant mesh
Of countless, quivering valves,

Driving the liquid into the leaves and buds
That absorb the sunlight that heaven grants,
To give us back the purest, sweetest air.

Published in Petite Cosmogonie Sentimentale
Éditions de la Revue Phénicienne, 2004