We had two gardens.
A real flower garden
overhanging the road
(our miniature Babylon).
Paths which I helped
to lay with Aunt Winifred,
riprapped with pebbles;
shards of painted delph;
an old potato boiler;
a blackened metal pot,
now bright with petals.
Hedges of laurel, palm.
A hovering scent of boxwood.
Crouched in the flowering
lilac, I could oversee
the main road, old Lynch
march to the well-spring
with his bucket, whistling,
his carroty sons herding
in and out their milch cows;
a growing whine of cars.
Then, the vegetable garden
behind, rows of broad beans
plumping their cushions,
the furled freshness of
tight little lettuce heads,
slim green pea-pods above
early flowering potatoes,
gross clumps of carrots,
parsnips, a frailty of parsley,
Sealed off by sweetpea
clambering up its wired fence,
the goats’ tarred shack
which stank in summer,
in its fallow, stone-heaped corner.
With, on the grassy margin,
a well-wired chicken run,
cheeping balls of fluff
brought one by one into the sun
from their metallic mother —
the paraffin incubator —
always in danger from
the marauding cat, or
the stealthy, hungry vixen:
I, their small guardian.
Two gardens, the front
for beauty, the back
for use. Sleepless now,
I wander through both
and it is summer again,
the long summers of youth,
as I trace small paths
in a trance of growth:
flowers pluck at my coat
as I bend down to help
or speak to my aunt
whose calloused hands
caressing the plants
are tender as a girl’s.
Smashing the Piano (1999)