Listening to the explosions
Of roses in the garden
One entire season spent
While the children chirped
At the ball whirling in the air.
Heard the noise of growing
Grass, in the still air.
A solitary cloud may pass
Over the sky filling the mind
Ears turned into bowls
Gathering the rustle.
Of ambiguous trees, like
The colour of leaves
Scribbled on the surface of a pool.
The public seasons of a public garden
And each flower enduring
Its own private winter and spring.

Thin yellow ephemeral
Flames of candles
Tremble and break out
In a darkness like water :
Such are the flowers.
Such burning eyelids of flames
Drape the oblong bluish eye
That the wax issues forth
Waxen tears melt and fall
At the eye's feet,
Sleep, and become amorphous.
Flowers, like eyes
About to die.
God's instruments scrape the subsoil
And implant the design
Of another season
In autumn, while the leaves are falling.

Again the dry
Leaves circle back to the ground.
Plants do not shed
Any other tears like animal tears
That are shed beyond seasons;
They have no eyes to weep out of.
This is the only
Distinction a man in the garden
Can make between a rose and a dog.
He sits spreading, newspapers below the sky
And observes the blue green world
Beyond the glasses he wears.