[分享] The Garden of Intellect (by Anne Stevenson)

[kamadevas (蔗尾蜂房)]

The Garden of Intellect
--by Anne Stevenson

It's too big to begin with.
There are too many wildless gardens
Walled to protect eccentric vegetation
From a crude climate.
Rare shoots, reared in glass until
Old enough to reproduce themselves,
Wholly preoccupy the gardeners
Who deliberately find it difficult
To watch each other, having planted themselves
Head downward with their glasses
In danger of falling off over their thumbs.

Some beds bear nearly a thousand petunias;
Others labour to produce one rose.
Making sense of the landscape, marking distinctions,
Neat paths criss-cross politely,
Shaping mauve, indigo and orange hexagons,
Composing triangles and circles
To make the terrain seem beautiful.

But to most of the inhabitants
These calculated arrangements are
Not only beautiful but necessary.
What they cultivate protects, is protected from
The man-eating weeds of the wilderness,
Roses of imaginary deserts,
Watered by mirage, embellished
By brilliant illusory foliage, more real
For having neither name nor substance.



*Anne Stevenson, Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems, (New York:
The Library of Amecica, 2008), p.4.

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