HANGING GARDENS, HASLEMERE                                  

Those of Babylon, no record left,

if half as beautiful as those you’ve kept

they deserved inclusion in the glorious Seven,

the wonders of which we’ll never know

sufficient for clever comparison; but enough to

win much more than accolades in words and gaze

than I, a devotee, might quickly assign

to their beauty, to your skill; I on my knees, 

a supplicant, begging that when my body stops

your summer baskets will be somewhere near.

And, if we were to banish the final fear,

it would be you at my side and your assertions

as to the colour and shape of a malleable world

affirmed in a glance towards the fading sky.

 

As if this house was built with myriad

potential locations for your creations,

even though those unknown architects

could not have drawn an image of such

riotous conflagration. I say that you must

share a table with them as co-artisans,

unconsciously applauded by each of those

who pass through the gardens and,

in amazement, stop in their tracks and

forget the small thing they were about to say,

silenced by what the sun, with you,

has done to the colour in your floral arrays;

they know that they are forever blessed

and slip the sight into bursting hearts.

 

And should we dare to claim that,

in view of the perfection in each

cascade of summer hues, they identify

the house that hosts the display – so displacing

name and number – and, when sprinkled on

our doorsteps, collected by the wind, there is

a representation, a promise of a beauty

to be scattered over this mixed wide world,

that claim would be endorsed by all, since

sight or sign of these bright delights

must mean hope at least for all who suffer

bravely on this Earth, that you pit against

the tide of so much that offends the eye,

an equal measure of what is yours alone.