|
With fruit still green, and only poppies’
blown petals imitating fruit, he took the net
mended and knotted, like a fisherman
riding dreams and memories of the garden,
then draped another year the fragile canes.
Fruit came, and the tempted thrush; a choking
frenzy of feathers, like stunned moths
banging the light with dusty
flutterings, that primitive terror
of swooping bats too close at dusk.
To birds he was another tree, a rock,
saint in a stained glass winbdow. Slow
patient as soil he cut mesh
cradling fragile song in those thick hands
scored with thorns. And free
the thrush did not fly at once; shared with him
first forgiven breath. Kneeling
by ruined net and swollen fruit,
feeling its eggshell-warmth within his palm
he knew another garden.
Emily Wills describes herself as a ‘part-time GP’:
she has worked in Africa; currently, with her family, she lives
and works in Gloucestershire. Like the other poets she began
her career by getting published in magazines; this poem from
her first collection is, ostensibly, about her father working
in his garden in Cornwall.
The poem can be read as a sharply observed
description of an incident common to all in the gardening
world. The gardener seeks to protect the fruit, a bird gets
tangled in the net, the gardener frees it. The writing is
confident and accomplished. Look at the contrast between
the second and third stanzas; the second evokes anxiety- ‘choking frenzy’, ‘stunned’, ‘ banging’, ‘fluttering’, ‘ terror’, ‘swooping’, ‘too
close’ - anyone who has had a panic attack will know
these sensations. The words knock their sense home with short
vowel sounds and an agglomeration of consonants, ‘choking
frenzy’, ‘stunned moths banging’. Compare
the calm of the next stanza, the slowed rhythm, the wider vowel
sounds - ‘was another tree, a rock’, the images
of stationary things, ‘soil’, ‘glass’.
I like the neat playfulness of ‘saint and stained’,
the same letters re-arranged: Emily is good at noticing how
words half echo each other, in another line she has ‘ruined’ and ‘fruit’.
But, if we hadn’t seen already, the last line ‘ he
knew another garden’ lets us know for sure that we have
to look for further connections in this poem. The invitations
are clear, ‘fruit’, tempted’, ‘fisherman’, ‘saint’, ‘scored
with thorns’, ‘forgiven’, ‘kneeling’.
The first stanza speaks of the ‘net / mended and knotted’:
the poem itself is a net and in it the poet draws up a mighty
draught of memories, beliefs, images of freedom and entrapment,
terror and safety. Purposefully the word ‘fragile’ occurs
twice. Yes, life is fragile, and, yes, tenderness can hold
it together.
I love this poem for the skill of the writing and, more, for
the great reach of its imagination - for just how much it gathers
in to inself. Andrew Marvell, in ‘The Garden At Appleton
House’, wrote ‘ensnared with flowers I fall on
grass’. It seems to me that all poems about gardens written
in the western christian tradition bear relationship with the
garden in Genesis. Marvell echoes the fall, Emily Wills has
temptation, ‘Fruit came, and the tempted thrush’,
and forgiveness ‘first forgiven breath’ (in itself
a remarkable phrase). It’s just bliss to come upon such
intelligent writing.
Michael Mackmin
Book prices are for UK postal rates only. For
Europe please add £2, for USA and Canada please add £3,
for Australia please add £3.50.
Send your orders to
THE RIALTO, PO BOX 309,
AYLSHAM, NORWICH,
NR11 6LN ENGLAND |
 |
