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The Garden at St. John's
Behind the wall of St. John's in the city
in the shade of the garden the Rector's wife
walks with her baby a girl and the first
its mouth at her neck seeking and sucking
in one hand holding its buttocks its skull
cupped by the other her arms like a basket
of tenderest fruit and thinks as she fondles
the nape of the infant its sweat is like dew
like dew and its hair is as soft as soft
as down as the down in the armpits of angels
The little white dog with the harlequin eye
his tail like a thumb feet nimble as casters
scoots in the paths of the garden's meander
behind the wall of St. John's in the city
a toy deposed from his place in her arms
by this doll of the porcelain bone
this pale living fruit without stone
She walks where the wrinkling tinkling fountain
laps at the granite head of a monk
where dip the slippery noses of goldfish
and tadpoles flip from his cuspid mouth
A miracle surely the young wife thinks
from such a hard husband a tender child
and thinks of his black sleeves on the hymnbook
inside the wall of St. John's in the city
the Ah of his stiff mouth intoning Amen
while the organ prolongs its harmonious snore
Two trees like swans' necks twine in the garden
beside the wall of St. John's in the city
brooding and cool in the shade of the garden
the scrolled beds of ivy glitter like vipers
A miracle surely this child and this garden
of succulent green in the broil of the city
she thinks as setting the bird-cries apart
she hears from beneath the dark spirals of ivy
under the wall of St. John's in the city
the rectal rush and belch of the subway
roiling the corrugate bowels of the city
and sees in the sky the surgical gleam
of an airplane stitching its way to the West
above the wall of St. John's in the city
ripping its way through the denim air