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12.7°C
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Steve Whitaker
Features Writer
@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social
P.ublished 18th April 2026
arts
Poem Of The Week: In Passing By Lisel Mueller
In Passing
How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious
How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious
Image by Ekaterina Novitskaya on Unsplash
The visual effect is miraculous, as mysterious as the tight bud in Mueller’s second tercet whose secret will emerge, and whose bursting forth into the light remains an ineffable surprise. Light into darkness, darkness into light; the poem reverses perception in order to describe a process of continuity in nature, as it also reverses our sense of wonder: the loss is also a gain, a precious rebirth.