Let the straight flower bespeak its purpose in straightness - to seek the light. Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose in crookedness - to seek the light. Let the crookedness and straightness bespeak the light.

The lines use flowers as a metaphor for human lives and desires. “Straight” and “crooked” suggest both moral/social judgments and, in Ginsberg’s milieu, the charged language of conformity versus queerness or nonconformity. Each flower’s form—whether aligned with norms or deviating from them—still “bespeaks its purpose”: an innate reaching toward “the light,” a figure for truth, enlightenment, love, or spiritual awakening. The closing line shifts from individual forms to a larger unity: difference itself (straightness and crookedness together) testifies to the same source of meaning. The quote thus argues for dignity in varied ways of being and frames aspiration as universal, not dependent on approved shapes.