Some Other Garden Read Free Page B

blue
                                        no colour there
we walked    kept to the walls when possible
expecting that predictable geometry would save us
in the end from paths of intersection
    and then events became confused degrees of angles
something we intended did not flex
broke through the surfaces of diagrams and entered
structure
                   so that even now
two hundred well placed orange trees lead off
to nowhere    bulbs pulsing underground anticipate
survival
                   we’re stopped here    frozen
to the marble of the balustrade
    where vanishing points
beckon

III
    Before I came to move again
this man prepared to organize
restrain the landscape
                                a simple act
of laying hold of paper pencil ruler
a protractor
    and clumsy shovels
projecting from the end of several brown arms
no complex survey tools the paths he chose were
marked by hand with chalk
or maybe twisted ribbon
    back to design the    arrows on the paper which follow
to the target of translation
they projected from the eye and then the arm
of what would seem a softer individual but
long before the workmen bent to turn aside
the first inch of the earth
  design had settled
hard in this man’s head
    more like concrete
than a garden

IV
    Thresholds existed
and I might have voyaged out at any moment
past the rusted cage of gates
                                          and into
    intense disorder
    instead I walked for months around
ambitious cultivation  aware of intervals of timber
and of fountains    the scrape of rake against
a thousand pebbles
the dull insistent questions of the statues
    and when his smile exposed the iron teeth
of garden tools
I felt the silver of the thresholds glisten
out to me
    but I was captured by his will   the formal garden
and welded too by indecision
to the holy taste of ash
around his mouth

V
    In winter trees exploded up against the sky
like black fireworks
                             they touched
to make the tunnels that I moved through
    the sun is gone I thought until I captured its reflection
in the dirty water of canals
                                        and then I took it
in my eyes and held it there
the after image burning permanent diamonds
on the folds inside my brain
    these were the personal adornments
that I carried with me always
always
so I could not see around them or beyond them
could not see beyond them
                                             out to the shadow
of another burning image
                                      he
walking unescorted through the garden
half a mile away

VI
    Dust on satin
the soft hems of my clothing
    and I believed it pleasant to carry something
of the garden to my wardrobe
                                             like silver powder drawn
    to me by some remote
magician
             pleasanter let’s say
than stunted vegetation
    reality made dirt of it of course
and quickly cleaned it from the tissue of my skirts
the brass and bristle of the clothes brush
in the cool hands of the servants
their motions so deliberate
                                         and so angry
    it was the way they disapproved of me that brushed aside
the traces of peculiar recreations
the way they disapproved of subtle dust
on satin
           and all those mornings that I emptied
free of time
                          walking walking walking
                      in that foolish garden

VII
    Spring was worst
a little wind would settle in
warm moist disorganized
pushing line away from the clutch of