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Like a student gardener

Like a student gardener at the renovated mansion,
sawing old Beetles in half
and restoring them in compact
compressions, the hangar galvanised by music,
I’d liked, more than liked - “befonded” she said -
a student gardener at the state-rescued mansion,
hearing old Beatles tunes as half
transferrals from her compact
disc (her on-off vocals supplied all the music).

A lock had been broken. The student gardener
at the National Trust mansion
had destroyed a whole room of beetles – half
a tray, too, of moths, half butterflies,
some specimens in compact
glass cases, some simply pins and black spots
on cartridge paper, like written music.

Then – no student, no gardener. At the hydropathic mansion
a doctor beetles and half
confesses to a black magic compact
forced on the best labourers with simplistic operatic music.
One look from that student gardener
and the whole remodelled mansion
would have crashed its crenellations, become King of the Belittleds, deverticaled to less than its half.

Just one look – beyond videocom, pact,
beyond secret understanding. Well, her glance – your glance –
was always renaissance music –
a master gardener renovating the common parklands,
seeing sparrows, stag beetles return and half
singing, half humming, believing this compact
rolling ball – they call it the world –
could be restored, maybe maybe maybe,
(the neuro-plasticity of the Earth) with fragile, self-forgetting music.


This poem is from Rays.


   
 
         
         

 

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