The Kingdom
of Plants
The sculpture garden
will be overgrown
like any open space.
Weeds are relentless,
high art, or not.
The marble, concrete, rock
may endure;
weathered stone, tilted plinths
like some lost Mayan city
the jungle swallowed-up.
While the fine-grained woods
with their loving hand-finish
will decompose
into dark smelly soil,
the stunning paint
fade in the sun.
Never mind the other unlikely gardens
that appropriate a word
best reserved for the kingdom of plants.
Kinder-gardens,
where we hot-house children
like precious seed.
The Garden of Eden,
where evil contends
with preternatural peace.
The garden of earthly delights
the garden city
All human conceits
that do not grow
and will not last.
Even our own cultivated gardens
of selected plants
cannot hold their own,
overgrown
by choking creepers
hanging vines
malignant weeds;
the wild things
we loathe and fear.
If the sculpture garden
came to life
who knows what works of art.
But it's a dead place;
like headstones, on overgrown graves,
perilously leaning
inscriptions erased.
An advertisement in the Toronto
paper caught my eye: something about a sculpture garden. I immediately
loved the creativity of the term, the inherent tension in that combination of
words: inert man-made things made of dead material set against something green
and organic and alive. At the same time, I disliked the presumption: that our
pretentious works of art are in any way comparable to the awesome (and I use
that word in its original sense of awe-inspiring, of open- mouthed wonder)
beauty and brilliance of nature. And I also thought how suitable a sculpture
garden is in such an urban and cosmopolitan place: an unsatisfying compromise
for people who confine themselves in concrete cities, yet feel this atavistic
longing for nature. ...Interesting how the mind processes two words in a matter
of seconds!
So I gave these ideas free rein (is
it "rein", as in horse-and-carriage; or "reign" as in
rule?!!), and let my stream of consciousness flow through my pen. And in the
end, the poem became another of my ruminations on human conceit: the temporary
nature of our gardens, our creations, our art; our conceit of permanence. The
name for this place almost seems an offence against the purity of the word:
calling something a garden when it doesn't even grow?
I rather like choking …hanging …malignant. And also rather like the
lost Mayan city and the abandoned cemetery as metaphors for the near and
distant future. I chose the title because I thought Kingdom worked so
well: just as we appropriate the word garden for our man-made creations,
nature reciprocates and takes on a human term freighted with connotations of
power and competition and conquest. I noticed just now that I used overgrown 3 times. I usually try to vary
things. But I think this just may work:
the repetition and call-back help tie the piece together.
(I know, I know: the Garden of
Eden was about knowledge, not evil. But wasn't knowledge (sex?
...self-consciousness? ...pride?) equated with evil? And as a Canadian, I would
have said "Maple Leaf" instead of Madison
Square
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