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Sport 43: 2015
Seminar, late harvest
Seminar, late harvest
A pessimist does not tend gardens. He sits inside
and reads. Or the rare narcissistic brooder
hoes books to behave as parks, quite as
much as he can.
He had planted one book as an adolescent, another
in his twenties, by the time he was turfing at sixty
he paused to ramble, ‘It’s distressing yacker at my age.
Can we leave it there?’
But you’ve no idea the miracle even bad seed
achieves. A jungle wrangles entire sections.
By freak, multi-coloured nasturtiums
burgeon fetid dumps.
And the honest despicable frequently-affianced muddler
asks, ‘What though could I expect? The sickles
of thorn, leaves broad as dishes, who designed
this shambles? Rousseau?’
The Master of Secateurs has no time for excuses.
‘Had you asked me,’ he snips, ‘about which to attend,
what implements to assist you. But no, your sort
seldom does.’
The workmen in Victoria novels sometimes dreamed
of allotments, the duke with his Pleasure Gardens less
explicitly garnered pox. Fate, as the Master informs,
seldom sprouts in rows.