Twickenham Garden

The garden is dead.
The sun is spent
and the earth is sunk,
sullen. And everywhere
the scent of soil,
defeat. Deceit
in the shape of a serpent.

And here I stand:
a senseless piece
of this place; a faceless
participle caught
in the present tense,
in the I am, I make,
I do –

I make-do with the dead.
With the lost marble
limbs and the mandrake.
I suck venom from the snake
and sap the crocodile's tears,
for I do bring the spider love,
fear; that old self-traitor.

O the webs we weave –
the stones we've sown
into the horizon,
entwining spine
and time
like so much rope
round my neck.

Dream, she says,
of the age-old tale.
Sleep. Weep.
The fruits of my pilgrimage.
I'm in over my head,
and O, I know that
the garden is dead.

But this is not
the end of the world,
no -

It's just the beginning.

* * *

This is not solely my voice. It's just my take on a re-write of John Donne's Twickenham Garden.

I think all the late nights and excessive tea-drinking of uni life are finally starting to get to me: I'm actually starting to like Donne.