And one last poem from this collection before I
get on to some very recent ones.
This one is called "The Garden of the Gods."
I get the Garden of the Gods from The Epic of Gilgamesh,
which apparently is the oldest epic in the world,
and Gilgamesh is wandering, searching for immortality.
He's discovered death, and death very much depresses him,
and he wants to find a way to be immortal.
And this is, what, Assyrian, is it?
Something like that.
And during his wanderings, he passes
through the Garden of the Gods.
And this is one of those gardens where
instead of berries and fruit on the trees and bushes,
there are jewels.
I don't mention Gilgamesh in this poem,
because actually, I'm speaking of all mythical gardens--
the garden in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Garden of Eden,
the Garden of the Hesperides, the walled garden
in which the speaker in medieval dream poems,
like some of Chaucer's and many others, wakes up,
and even the garden that we enter
when we take certain drugs.
So this is about all of them.
"The Garden of the Gods."
All plants grow here.
The most minute, glowing from turf, is in its place.
The constant vision of the race: lawn, orchard,
deep with flower and fruit, so bright that some
who see it near think there is lapis on the stems,
and think green, blue, and crimson gems
hang from the vines and briars here.
They follow path to path in wonder
through the intense and dazzling light.
Nowhere does blossom flare so white.
Nowhere so black is earth mold under.
It goes, though it may come again.
But if it lasts, they try to tell,
they search horror trope or parallel, and cannot,
after all, explain.
It was sufficient there to be, and meaning, thus,
was superseded.
Night circles it.
It has receded, distant and difficult to see.
Where my foot rests, I hear the creak
from generations of my kin, layer on layer,
pressed-leaf thin.
They merely are.
They cannot speak.
This was the garden's place of birth.
I trace it downward from my mind, through breast and calf.
I feel it vined and rooted in the death-rich earth.