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the only narcissus worth half a hoot

I can’t even bring myself to say daffodil, the word too much like a contraction of daffy and dildo .

The great majority of narcissus you find in civilians’ yards right now are yellow. We all know how yellow makes you crazy, not to mention nauseous. It’s a crappy color: the color of pus; of rot; of an old bruise; the color we have all been trained to recognize as a warning.

But even the white, orange, and yellow combos have too much going against them to ever win them favor within modern connoisseurship: gross proportions coupled with a palette of primary colors unrelieved by barely a drop of shade.

They do not move fluidly through space,  slouching there on their stems, that out-of-proportion probiscus gaping like a yokel’s jaw under the smarter flowers in the garden. Narcissus are simple, and for that reason ought to be culled from the pool. Literally.

Metaphorically neither do they stand in for a pure innocence nor a deep debasement, they are only a sign for mild pleasantness. They are a mild sedative, numbness in a non-opioid, mediocrity on a stem.

But! This one. Oh yes (mon)sirs and ma'(d)ams, this one is very different. For your consideration:

narcissus poeticus recurvus
Narcissus poeticus recurvus.

Gaze upon that complicated little trumpet with its hard red corona, caress with your eyes those elegantly backstretching pure white petals.

This is the only narcissus that would be allowed to survive on my personal planet. That and maybe this one, though I have yet to see it in person and so cannot vouchsafe its perpetuity.

Narcissus poeticus recurvus

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