Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TROY PARK: 4. THE PLEASURE GARDENS, by EDITH SITWELL



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TROY PARK: 4. THE PLEASURE GARDENS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Do you remember, damon, the hot noons
Last Line: Songs from some far-off land, -- the distant music!


DO you remember, Damon, the hot noons
And the paths bordered with vast unknown gardens
Of apes, grown men? There through the iron gates
Of the fantastic gardens grow great flowers,
And those small heart-shaped flowers that have the eyes
Of little sisters in our long-dead childhood.
You are a child again, with your young face
Plunged in the calyx of the great dream-flowers
Smelling them . . . they die away like music
Within your brain, like all the sounds of youth.

Then from the landscape sounds a note of menace
From the fantastic darkness of the forests;
There are vast plains beyond our sight, afar,
And there amid the green baize thickened leaves
Live all the creaking gods of kitchen gardens . . .
Outside their realm, in chickeny wet grass
The farmer and the gardener as they pass
Have faces that seem feathered like the wind,
Or Mercury, and Darkness hides behind
Their faces like the empty wind's blind mask.

And deep within the broken laurel groves,
Are those that seem our own prophetic shadows.
The old Bacchantes of the suburbs, sit
Where sunlight wraps their unloved bones with warmth,
Stare like the dead at something none may see,
Mumble unspoken words that died long since,
For want of one to listen, year on year.
"I sit a little, warming in the sun
This crumbling dust of mine, and to my heart
I hold a little blue-eyed fair-haired ghost --
But oh, he never needs my breast-milk now, --
My breasts have withered for the want of him
And I have nothing left for Death to take!"
"How happy are you with your little ghost!
But I am old and cold and have small greeds,
My dreams are all the same, of daily needs . . .
For oh, the poor dreams fade away, my dear.
Perhaps they have grown tired; we hardly hear
Their music now; or else they were too young
To bear with us; for the harsh world is tired,
We make the world impatient, grown so slow.
All day we creep through the unending city . . .
The vulturine wide light that knows no pity
Devours our aged hearts, defenceless, old.
Yet though our eyes are dim with age, we know
The unfriendly faces, and our friendless bones
Feel their unburiedness, struck with death's chill."
So, deep within the broken laurel groves,
These that seem our own prophetic shadows,
The old Bacchantes of the suburbs, sit
Where sunlight wraps their unloved bones with warmth,
Stare like the dead at something none may see.
But here in this unknown and flashing summer weather
We walk among the bosquets, once more young,
And lovely now that we may walk together . . .
Oh, the strange people . . . the child paladins
From some fantastic delicate pilgrimage,
The young mammas, with shadows lengthening
Into great birds that sing among the gardens
Songs from some far-off land, -- the distant music!





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