I have had enough. I gasp for breath.
Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at last to the hill-crest- then you retrace your steps, or find the same slope on the other side, precipitate.
I have had enough- border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies, herbs, sweet-cress.
O for some sharp swish of a branch- there is no scent of resin in this place, no taste of bark, of coarse weeds, aromatic, astringent- only border on border of scented pinks.
Have you seen fruit under cover that wanted light- pears wadded in cloth, protected from the frost, melons, almost ripe, smothered in straw?
Why not let the pears cling to the empty branch? All your coaxing will only make a bitter fruit- let them cling, ripen of themselves, test their own worth, nipped, shrivelled by the frost, to fall at last but fair With a russet coat.
Or the melon- let it bleach yellow in the winter light, even tart to the taste- it is better to taste of frost- the exquisite frost- than of wadding and of dead grass.
For this beauty, beauty without strength, chokes out life. I want wind to break, scatter these pink-stalks, snap off their spiced heads, fling them about with dead leaves- spread the paths with twigs, limbs broken off, trail great pine branches, hurled from some far wood right across the melon-patch, break pear and quince- leave half-trees, torn, twisted but showing the fight was valiant.
O to blot out this garden to forget, to find a new beauty in some terrible wind-tortured place. |