growing lawn
anawim
brute flowers
Garden thick with
bindweed couchgrass
thistleheads (swollen
comedy thumbs)
creeping buttercups
The future: bolted
gone to seed
and spreading
Uncommonly common
flowers are all over
No place for getting
the purchase
on one anything
Just the red tatters
blown down
an uncleaned
street
To catch a glimpse
What a green itch
for other than just so
Let the wild red tatters blow about and re-seed this mechanical world with an unrestrained commonness of beauty.
ReplyDeleteYour beautiful poem has that bright, frail hope running through it, TC.
ReplyDeleteMy brother called my attention to another radical flowering from John Clare:
To an insignificant flower, obscurely blooming in a lonely wild
And though thou seem'st a weedling wild,
Wild and neglected like me,
Thou still art dear to Nature's child,
And I will stop to notice thee.
For oft, like thee, in wild retreat,
Array'd in humble garb like thee,
There's many a seeming weed proves sweet,
As sweet as garden-flowers can be.
And, like to thee, each seeming weed
Flowers unregarded; like to thee,
Without improvement, runs to seed,
Wild and neglected like me.
And like to thee, when Beauty's cloth'd
In lowly raiment like to thee,
Disdainful Pride, by Beauty loath'd,
No beauties there can ever see.
For, like to thee, my Emma blows,
A flower like thee I dearly prize;
And, like to thee, her humble clothes
Hide every charm from prouder eyes.
But though, like thee, a lowly flower,
If fancied by a polish'd eye,
She soon would bloom beyond my power,
The finest flower beneath the sky.
And, like to thee, lives many a swain
With genious blest; but, like to thee,
So humble, lowly, mean, and plain,
No one will notice them, - or me.
So, like to thee, they live unknown,
Wild weeds obscure; and, like to thee,
Their sweets are sweet to them alone:
The only pleasure known to me.
Yet when I'm dead, let's hope I have
Some friends in store, as I'm to thee,
That will find out my lowly grave,
And heave a sigh to notice me.
Probably not a good idea to allow for a comparison between myself and Clare.
Delete