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44 The Gardener of Qufu The pine bark had cracked open earlier in the autumn frost and now a late train of ants heavy with tyre dust crossed a word I once carved on the trunk hauling bits of rice crackers up along the frozen aqueduct to the treetops where you caught your sleeve in the needles, fell and broke you back sixty-seven year ago while I was playing with my first marbles in the clearing outside the temple and I turned around the miniature yew and kumquat, mountains and pavilions all thrown out of place, places I dreamt were real because the garden was a prison. You spent the next month restoring the landscapes in the pots while I jumped over the iron gate, swishing past the giant stone tablets incised with the Master’s words, inching under the dark foliage before the path opened my eyes to the mountain where I practised writing on the trunks with my penknife and disappeared when the fog rose. Then I’d wade homewards, drunk with the secrets of the day, and see your thinning hair 45 messed up during your siesta before you asked me if I had tossed the manure and washed the tablets, ten thousand things simplified into the one routine. Now only the routine’s left: being both here and not here speaking as if one could really speak of roots at our meeting place. Now we are quiet at last I can forgive you. Remember ‘the sky’ I once scratched on that tree? Perhaps you can forgive me? ...

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