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