Murray Shelmerdine
The garden
The garden grows as if it will live for ever
Humming bees under the wind of chaos
Flinging flowers into the air
Leaving leaves to hang there
Worming roots of the need to care
Silently screaming: “Weed me, seed me,
Double dig me, love me, feed me!”
Suddenly one day in 1926
It grew a house of lime and bricks
To hold tame humans armed with sticks
And spades and forks and hoes
And plumbing
And it was good
The garden wanted more
It opened its legs, jocund and fecund
Bonked a passing rainstorm
And gave birth to a street
Semi-detached, perfectly matched
With gardens in its own image
Deeply complacent
Looming loam and humping humus
The garden dreamed a long, gestatory dream
Gravid with grapes and gooseberries
Heavy with hollyhocks
Until Foof! Flam! Pinch me!
The garden created Finchley
Complete in every detail that you see
Including fake photos on the walls of Tescos
Of what it looked like in 1893
Then the garden settled down for an eternity
Of middle class suburban comfort
But away down, under the ground
The Gnostic Gods of Gnossos
(Not far from Knossos)
Searched under the Stygian depths
And Tartarean epths
And released from a dark, dark, dark, dark hole
A garden-guzzling creature
Who only wants to eat you
Whose fate is still to beat you
Who always will defeat you -
The blind entropic mole . . .
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Page(s) 47-48
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