P Lal’s poem “Life” uses a flower with five petals as a central metaphor to explore different human ideals and experiences. Each “petal” represents a concept that people usually think of as valuable or uplifting, but the poet deliberately presents them in unsettling, even painful ways. The poem moves from the familiar to the disturbing, gradually darkening in tone.

The Flower as a Symbol

A flower traditionally suggests beauty, harmony, and balance. By calling the subject “a flower of five petals,” the poet invites us to expect something orderly and complete. However, each petal reveals not comfort, but tension and contradiction. What should be life-giving instead appears fragile, wounded, or inaccessible.

The First Petal: Love

Love is described through the image of a bee settling on a flower to quench its thirst. On the surface, this seems natural and gentle. Yet the word “lusting” introduces a sense of desire that is hungry rather than tender. Love here is not purely selfless; it is something consumed. The image suggests that love often involves need, craving, and taking, not just giving.

The Second Petal: Faith

Faith is called a “drooping treasure.” This implies something once valuable that now hangs weakly, as if losing strength. When faith is “reckoned in fastidious measure,” it becomes over-examined and judged too carefully. The poem suggests that when faith is subjected to excessive scrutiny or rigid calculation, it begins to wither rather than sustain belief.

The Third Petal: Hope

Hope is presented as a “brooding breast” where a blood-spattered bird comes to rest. This is a powerful and disturbing image. Hope is no longer innocent or clean; it shelters something wounded. The bird’s blood suggests suffering and violence, implying that hope often survives in the aftermath of pain. It is not bright optimism, but endurance after injury.

The Fourth Petal: Absence and Longing

The speaker admits, “The fourth I cannot see.” Instead of an idea, we are given a physical image: a limp hand stretching endlessly for land. This suggests desperation, drowning, or exile. The unseen fourth petal represents something essential that remains unreachable—perhaps certainty, salvation, or belonging. The endless reaching emphasizes human longing without fulfillment.

The Fifth Petal: Entrapment

The final petal reveals the darkest image: a man wrapped inside a terrible book, “terribly trapped.” The book can be read as law, scripture, fate, or ideology. Instead of offering wisdom or freedom, it becomes a prison. This suggests how rigid systems of belief, text, or authority can confine human beings rather than liberate them.

Overall Meaning

Taken together, the poem challenges idealized concepts like love, faith, and hope. Instead of presenting them as pure virtues, it shows how they are often mixed with desire, doubt, suffering, and confinement. The flower is complete, but it is not beautiful in a comforting way.

In simple terms, the poem suggests that human ideals are real and powerful, but they are also flawed, painful, and deeply entangled with struggle. Rather than offering easy reassurance, the poet asks the reader to confront the cost of believing, loving, and hoping in an imperfect world.