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Daniel Weissbort

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from “Letters to Ted”

The Garden

 

You built yourself a hut in the garden, on a tumulus –
or was it your father built it? –
which for a while you shared with hornets,
so you could “rid the house of my idle presence”.
Idle presence! Certainly, the writing was not idleness,
you so fierce in its defense.

It seemed to me – in my ignorance, it’s true –
you never got that garden right.
Apparently, you disliked the extent of lawn,
planting a line of dwarf trees, to contour and divide its sweep.

But why did you countenance it for so long?
Were you just complying with the notion of an English
                    country garden: tea on the lawn?
Still, such immaculateness did seem alien –
perhaps that was true of Devon as a whole.
You told me once, too, that Devon sent you to sleep.
But you stayed. Perhaps sleep is what was needed.

So, though you fiddled with it, you accepted the garden on
                    its own terms,
and only latterly did you aspire to impose your own,
as you did on your whole environment and oeuvre.
Was it because you knew it was too late?
You were a delicate man, who imposed without imposing.

Now you are gone and a bull’s head presides,
on its own mound, just down from that hut –
one large question mark in this green and Christian land.
There is something artless, provisional about it,
from a draft, maybe, of a larger project?

 

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