The Poet's Garden

Here lies one whose name is writ in hedgehog urine

One fine morning in early Autumn, upon a whim, I purchased a Grecian urn from a hirsute man in a dark pinstripe suit who, before he was arrested by the police, sold such items of archaeological interest from a shady pitch outside the British Museum.
"Tell you what, Guv'nor." he said. "This urn'll look smashing in your back garden surrounded by lichens, moss, weeds and whatnot.
"I couldn't agree more." I told him. "I'll take it."
"Lovely. And could I interest sir in this charming hieroglyphic obelisk  from the third kingdom at all?"
"Not today, thank you, no. The urn is all I need for now." I replied, mesmerized by the Attic shape and fair attitude of my new possession.
I suppose I must have been feeling a touch poetical that day, perhaps even slightly consumptivey or something, for  Grecian urns are by no means traditional souvenirs of one's visit to the city of Dickens and Tommy Steele. Yet I had been truck by the poetical power of the object and, as the salesman had observed, once I had burned all the lilies and marigolds and other flowery nonsense that my idiot wife had planted, the urn would make a superb centerpiece for the jardin du poèt I was planning.
As soon as I arrived at home I began demolishing the ludicrous orange grove my buffoonish other half had built the previous year, and erected a wild Arcadian diorama for my urn in the ruins. This involved piling up a bunch of stones into a reasonable semblance of a castle wall onto which the splendor could fall, as long as I remembered to order some sacks of splendor from Tennyson Splendor Supply Co.
Then I hacked into the town water supply,dismantling the pipes and diverting the flow so that it became a small, weed-infested stream suitable for virginal maidens like Ophelia to drown themselves in. After lunch I trimmed an enormous privet hedge into the shape of a huge albatross and added a few Corinthian columns to my ivy clad "Tomb of Endymion."
Two weeks later, when all the poetical garden ornaments were properly arranged, I changed into a frilly shirt, took up a scroll of parchment, some green inks and an especially feathery quill , and sat beneath the mottled shade of a weeping willow tree I had planted, awaiting inspiration.
Unfortunately it began to rain almost immediately, so I had to go inside. When it stopped I returned to my garden only to discover that it had turned into a sea of mud. Oh well, I thought, there's only one thing for it: "What passing bells for these who die as cattle ..." I started inscribing on my piece of damp parchment. After all, we poets are nothing if not adaptable to the tyranny of circumstance.

Comments

[Edward Williams]

Indeed. The splendor of your verses,
Unseen, are received by osmosis.
The only means
That can evade--or go below the
Transmision lines of yelling media.
These ring vitally in my inner ear.
And so I know
Another lucky poet sits, in sodden
Contempation, in the green rain.
So to speak.

[Edward Williams]

Indeed. The splendor of your verses,
Unseen, are received by osmosis.
The only means
That can evade--or go below the
Transmision lines of yelling media.
These ring vitally in my inner ear.
And so I know
Another lucky poet sits, in sodden
Contemplation, in the green rain.
So to speak.

[OutOfContext]

...sacks of splendor from Tennyson Splendor Supply Co.
I prefer Wordsworth brand. He puts out a fantastic "Splendor In The Grass/Glory In The Flowers" seed mix. Lie in it and it brings back memories of youth in a Proustian rush, which you can also get in a bottle from Chanel, if you don't have space for a garden.