FLOWERS AND OTHER NAMELESS SPECIES Poem by Luís Quintais

Nothing in nature has a name.
As if it were a botanical garden
with only the vaguest indications, preferably in Latin.

Linnaeus would laugh at my happy ignorance,
at this knowledge that blithely
delights in not knowing.

Colors, shapes, inebriating fragrances,
the senseless, sensation-filled vertigo of a forest,
the vegetable atmosphere of a greenhouse,

the flowers like open sex organs - are they
sex organs? - which I dive into as visitors look on.
They'd be shocked to find out that nothing in nature -

is ‘nature' this voluptuous game
of self-ignorance? - has a name. It's all organic essence
not found in herbariums, all disproportion,

all a dream of indecipherables slowly rotting
before this virtuous classificatory ignorance
bursting with life inside me.