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Click here Don't go outside the garden, Maud –
the city dump stops right behind the fence;
the rats run riot to our great expense.
The view, I fear, is rather flawed.
Just stay a while with me
to hear the blackbird greet the setting sun.
Look, overhead! It's up that slender tree
and has its peer in none!
That tree's a birch – when I was still a girl
my mother used to teach me what to call
each plant and tree. I still remember all
and how those days would set my mind awhirl;
now I'll teach you... If only when you reach
my age there will be something left to teach...
Those branches can't be trusted, Maud -
They might break off and hurt you. Yes, I know.
The bird will not return. We loved it so;
let's hope it's found its way abroad.
We'll rest against the wall.
Yes, that's a nettle, and those little hairs
may sorely sting you, hence the name it bears –
and yet it's pretty. It's got grace, and shows
a certain dignity. With luck it grows
well over six foot tall.
I'll take you to the garden, Maud –
those rats have vanished though the smell has not –
yet there's still something pleasant to be got
on this old earth. We won't be bored;
come sit down in the grass and rest
your narrow back against my breast
and look! This ear of grass
is just a bunch of flowers – tidy, small,
but every bit a germ of life withal
to grow when winters pass.
I wish you still were with me, Maud –
the grey and dirty snows have thawed away
and it gets warmer every single day,
a change you'd surely have adored –
and yet it's strange...
just browns and ochres, blacks and greys,
a smell of must and moist, of acid earth,
the silent sunset's angry crimson blaze –
and this that mystical rebirth,
that hoped-for change?
...and the love with which they are taught. A poignant poem for me...I hear the unsounded sighs! Well done!
Your "Maud" made me think Betjeman although your usage is clearly darker. S.O.
One of your best, demure. I have to believe that even "free versers" would find delight in this. It's just so well put together. I might have sought a single syllable substitution for "Maud" in line 1 stanza 3, but that's a matter of personal taste and therefore a quibble.
It reminded me of how Anthony Hecht wrote, one of my favorite poets, although he usually chose more morose themes than what is expressed here.
The last stanza has so many wonderful components. I loved the conversational quality of it, not only the second person address, but the "it's" and the "you'd." No, we don't talk in rhymes usually, but we talk with contractions. What a wonderful way to enhance the conversational tone of the poem with the understanding, of course, it's a poem, not a conversation.
The phonics of all the subtle "ts" and "st" in the last stanza give it a subliminal mystical quality that fits so well with the narrative's climax and makes me think, "Damn! I wish I had written that!"
Clearly one of your best IMO.