{"id":4400,"date":"2016-02-12T15:43:19","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T15:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=4400"},"modified":"2017-11-08T16:08:08","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T16:08:08","slug":"an-undesirable-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2016\/02\/12\/an-undesirable-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"An undesirable garden  by Janet Rogerson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>An undesirable garden\u00a0 by Janet Rogerson<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The cement mixer is here,<br \/>\none hand on its head,<br \/>\nthe other on its tummy.<br \/>\nOur gardening books are thumbed grey.<br \/>\nWe mither over colours, the shape of petals,<br \/>\nhe insists upon a bed of brown tulips,<br \/>\nstone-bells in the shade garden<br \/>\nbefore the dell, and sandflowers<br \/>\nover there for damp summers.<\/p>\n<p>We are in love of course<br \/>\nand our books know it.<br \/>\nHis grandmother always said<br \/>\nyou can&#8217;t make a garden without love.<br \/>\nThat was his father&#8217;s mother, the one<br \/>\nwho didn&#8217;t take her coat of, ever,<br \/>\nand at baby&#8217;s funeral, at home-time<br \/>\nhot-faced and buttoned up, said<br \/>\nthanks very much, I&#8217;ve enjoyed it.<\/p>\n<p>But let me explain, we can&#8217;t, we won&#8217;t<br \/>\nhave any of the buzzing things in our garden.<br \/>\nWe will not make one more<br \/>\nspace that contains them.<br \/>\nWe will sculpt instead of plant,<br \/>\npaint bright and not water,<br \/>\nour petals will be hard,<br \/>\nour grass sharp, and only<br \/>\nthe unscented will be welcome here.<\/p>\n<p>Most people are used to cement being delivered in ready-mix lorries, but it&#8217;s possible to mix your own. I spent a certain amount of time staring at cement mixers as a child, so, although one of our readers didn&#8217;t get the opening three lines, I got them entirely. The barrel of the thing churns the mix, but there&#8217;s also the round handle at the side which you use to tilt the mixed cement into the barrow. These kind of details are important to me. The opening of the poem is explained in its third stanza, where we discover that the garden will be sculpted and painted, and without buzzing things \u2013 no chance of pollination\/ fertilization. The kick of the poem is in the middle stanza and is one of those potent unsettlings of expectation that Janet is so good at, where &#8216;baby&#8217;s funeral&#8217; is fused into a children&#8217;s party \u2013 &#8216;home-time&#8217;, capped by the grandmother&#8217;s remark. Remarkable.<\/p>\n<p><em>Michael Mackmin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most people are used to cement being delivered in ready-mix lorries, but it\u2019s possible to mix your own. I spent a certain amount of time staring at cement mixers as a child, so, although one of our readers didn\u2019t get the opening three lines, I got them entirely. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6109,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4400\/revisions\/6109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}