Garden

I walked in the romantic garden and I walkedin the garden of ruin. I walked in the green-skinned,black-skinned garden of Osiris who was ripped to piecesand reformed and adored. I walked in that wet,incestuous plot. Am I the only one who readsfor innocence? I walked in the garden of Amadou Diallowhose shadow was punctured by unnumbered shaftsof light leading from West Africa to America where walletsare guns. The chirp you heard in the garden as of two blackholes merging is what we called the soul. And when we cupour hands to drink at his fountain we make the shapeof his skull. Am I the only one who reads for thirst?I walked in the gardens of Houston where lizardstook their colors at the borders between terror and wonder,dread and leafy glade, between silence and Sinatra.I walked in Pope's garden in Twickenham that rhymedwilderness and picturesque, walled in and out the stuntedself. In the garden of ruin new growth from the palmsI read as artful, neutral. In the romantic garden the fascistssing "I love you, I love you not." Statues in the gardensare wrapped in Mylar blankets and blue plastic tarpslike refugees. I read them for reflection. I read for nation.I read for color and form. In the orangery of Guantanamo,in the grapevine of Babylon, I'm lost. I went there for the buzz,the fiction of silence and a better self. Dressed sentimentallyin a dynamite suit in the garden of dates and pomegranates,I read for patterns of the blast.