i wander through both

PATHS
We had two gardens.

A real flower garden

overhanging the road

(our miniature Babylon).

Paths which I helped

to lay with Aunt Winifred,

riprapped with pebbles;

shards of painted delph;

an old potato boiler;

a blackened metal pot,

now bright with petals.

Hedges of laurel, palm.

A hovering scent of boxwood.

Crouched in the flowering

lilac, I could oversee

the main road, old Lynch

march to the wellspring

with his bucket, whistling,

his carrotty sons herding

in and out their milch cows:

a growing whine of cars.

Then, the vegetable garden

behind, rows of broad beans

plumping their cushions,

the furled freshness of

tight little lettuce heads,

slim green pea pods above

early flowering potatoes,

gross clumps of carrots,

parsnips, a frailty of parsley,

a cool fragrance of mint.

Sealed off by sweetpea

clambering up its wired fence,

the tarred goats' shack

which stank in summer,

in its fallow, stone-heaped corner.

With, on the grassy margin,

a well-wired chicken run,

cheeping balls of fluff

brought one by one into the sun

from their metallic mother

—the oil-fed incubator—

always in danger from

the marauding cat, or

the stealthy, hungry vixen:

I, their small guardian.

Two gardens, the front

for beauty, the back

for use. Sleepless now,

I wander through both

and it is summer again,

the long summers of youth

as I trace small paths

in a trance of growth:

flowers pluck at my coat

as I bend down to help,

or speak to my aunt,

whose calloused hands

caressing the plants

are tender as a girl's.

by john montague 

(via the poetry foundation)