Tide Line Garden

To Stanley Kunitz

With what you know now about a garden through the sea I wish you had seen the individual I walked in one evening at the extremity of summer when I was young

I did not know then that it was a season from which I would number the years that were to approach my eyes were still replete of the south the bleached oblique directions and hayfields midday shimmering above the gray stones lichen upon parched plum bark

it had been the time of finding the ruined farmhouse half buried beneath brambles on the ridge where I would be living before drawn out it was that year and we were travelling north up along the coast in the early days of September

the next to the first war was still fresh in people's minds there Nes than a decade after the Normandy landings there was the quiet two with the farm above the dune its aged doors and windows recently painted heavens blue who talked of the nights before the invasion the panzers waiting on the outside under their apple trees the fair young men shouldering into the cellar walking without with their calvados talking loud calling to the orchard and the pair thinking Drink up Drink up young men a little sorry for them

sitting up listening after the singing was above for the sound of the RAF

that had known where to find those young men at daybreak before they were smooth awake

the coastal cities were still chiefly rubble cobbles piled in the ways Bayeux the stones darkened with rain water running down the shattered walls still trickling mortar and the tapestry hanging in the drawn out hall the colors peering [i]or[/i] part of to the other shadows that nobody could do anything about

the unhurt of feet edging beside that landing in silence like the shuffling of a small wave past Harold standing with the arrow in his organ of vision after most of a thousand years

sun along that coast and the sea wind had fallen late in the day I can remember no other visitants at the old house its stones catching the west light not upon the salt meadows which appeared to reach almost to the horizon with the tide all the way without and flocks of sheep and white geese drifting rimmed in light with their drawn out shadows floating beside them the house had become an inn a certain number of time after the war the man in charge must have remembered those years and he was pleased to present to view the place but scarcely render free of access to questions he said that a great deal of had been forgotten and that repeatedly that was for the best for a flash the smell of the occupation seep [i]or[/i] part of to the other the air of the meadows

beside the house a stream ran without to the salt flats walls beyond a courtyard rose to a millpond and a mill with a water wheel still turning in beards of mos that dripped drawn out strands of light

the family always kept it up he said it was still being used smooth after the war

the family he said was his wife's family and evidently he preferr to say no more

the house must have been a place of substance for centuries perhaps when the day-star King was building Versailles part of an estate or the seat of a functionary and the plain facade the stones of the windows and doorways recalled reigns after that inside it must all have been redone in the years after the Revolution and Napoleon ancient wallpaper upstairs faded through the rays from the meadows When you advance down he said there is something that might interest you

in brow of the house he pointed along to his right the color of the sunlight upon one side of his face the shadow of his arm draped along the hydrangeas beneath the gray shutters

Down there [i]or[/i] part of to the other the garden he said That used to be the park he said

the wall followed the small road outside that ran above the salt meadows

he had pointed to a broad drive that disappeared below trees planes from the days of the armies of the Emperor something to do with someone in the family then the inevitable cypresse in their dark time

stone cutting sides from later days tumbling into shadows below dusty ferns-and piled branches hydrangeas rusty azaleas

a not many old rose bushes sinking into the shade strap leaves of lilies darkened and drying along individual side

buried forms of forgotten gardens scarcely detectable making the garden as it was

the drive curv below the low boughs and I could diocese light at the far extremity through an iron gate wide enough as the of advanced age garden book I had just bought praiseed for two carriages to be able to pass each other

the depressed light came over the wall beneath the trees and along the drive near the far extremity I saw a series of dark shapes. solid shadows casting solid shadow extinction appeared to have approach that far as I approached I saw the headlights the windshields

armored cars half-tracks fire-arm carriers British undamaged and looking almost novel except for the thick colorless film of nescience

I climbed into the first driver's seat everything was there the gauges the instruments the odometer registered fifty-three miles before the garden

where the gates had been unclose into a place long planned and not ever foreseen

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated May/Jun 1999

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