Private Garden

Some kind of order there has to be;

Refuge from history and philosophistry.

I try, if I can, to avoid the Medusa’s head.

I prefer the bearable, the beautiful,even.

In spite of everything,I cultivate

A small plot,a place of healing.

The Isles of the Blessed;Epicurus’s School;

You can keep them.The weather still falls,

All the same.

My hands are my vocation: what they feel

Is true.


Gilgamesh found his way to Dilmun,

Beyond the seas and mountains,

But immortal life was denied him;

The world still had work for his hands.

This soil I crumble between thumb

And finger is all the nations and cultures

Ever to root in the earth.

Nothing here is meant to last,

Transience its glorious quintessence.

And yet there is slow ceremony;

Enchanted recollection fixes me

To the spot,connected, alone.


The hunter-gatherer’s ritual persists:

Art is this,which cannot be captured

Or accommodated,life’s pure excess,

Too various to keep hold of,

Bright mercury changing state.


Here I can befriend my weird self,

Peasant-prince in an endangered dominion,

Revisiting stories in my head.

To see what is right before you:-

The mission, the gardener’s tools.