Jungle

[vaneramos]

My best childhood friend lived on the far side of a small woodlot, which we called the Jungle, consisting of mulberries, trees-of-heaven and plump, twisted Manitoba maples. An old stone and wire fence surrounded it, but the only remains of a building was a bare garage-sized foundation. The property belonged to an old woman no one had ever seen. We built tree houses on the generous maple branches. Wild sweet cicely, Osmorhiza claytoni, grew underneath. We liked to chew the succulent, sugary stems. Many happy memories centre on the Jungle. Later we dug an underground hideout, where I would sit and watch my friend smoke a joint, too cautious to partake.

Trails around Guelph's outskirts sometimes reveal things that remind me of the Jungle, like the foundation of the farmhouse, which must have once overlooked a sweeping vista of the Eramosa River. It is now overgrown with a wilderness of lilacs, little remaining but a wrought-iron stairway. Sometimes a clump of spring bulbs will appear in the middle of the woods, surviving from a garden that vanished decades ago.

Nature, left to its devices, takes care of things. We will eventually outgrow this planet. Beauty will clean up after us.

Comments

[artricia.livejournal.com]

This entry, and especially the picture, remind me of Derek Mahon's "A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford": http://www.thepoem.co.uk/poems/mahon.htm

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I love aconites! Dr Seuss flowers. Were these squeezed out of the tube?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

There's something poetic about the flowers blooming beside that discarded tube. Unfortunately I can't access the site you linked. Hopefully it will work later.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Winter aconites were never part of my mother's garden, in fact I never saw them as a child. As a teenager I picked them out of a bulb catalogue and planted some in my rock garden, wanting to have the earliest flowers possible. They failed to bloom. I can't remember whether I'd ever actually seen any blooming except in photographs. It seemed like a miracle finding these last week, so perfect. It was a clump of about 20. I'm still amazed to think they must have thrived there for decades. Or perhaps you're right: they were squeezed out of a tube.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

It's working for me now, so I've copied and pasted below:

A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford

Let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels
Seferis — 'Mythistorema'

For J.G. Farrell

Even now there are places where a thought might grow —
Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
To a slow clock of condensation,
An echo trapped forever, and a flutter
Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,
Indian compounds where the wind dances
And a door bangs with diminished confidence,
Lime crevices behind rippling rainbarrels,
Dog corners for bone burials;
And a disused shed in Co. Wexford,

Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.
This is the one star in their firmament
Or frames a star within a star.
What should they do there but desire?
So many days beyond the rhododendrons
With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud,
They have learnt patience and silence
Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.

They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
of the expropriated mycologist.
He never came back, and light since then
Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain.
Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew
And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something —
A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue
Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.

There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
Into the earth that nourished it;
And nightmares, born of these and the grim
Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.
Those nearest the door growing strong —
'Elbow room! Elbow room!'
The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling
Utensils and broken flower-pots, groaning
For their deliverance, have been so long
Expectant that there is left only the posture.

A half century, without visitors, in the dark —
Poor preparation for the cracking lock
And creak of hinges. Magi, moonmen,
Powdery prisoners of the old regime,
Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought
And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream
At the flashbulb firing squad we wake them with
Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.

They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way,
To do something, to speak on their behalf
Or at least not to close the door again.
Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii!
'Save us, save us,' they seem to say,
'Let the god not abandon us
Who have come so far in darkness and in pain.
We too had our lives to live.
You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,
Let not our naive labours have been in vain!'


From Collected Poems (Gallery Press, 1999)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is breathtaking! And very appropriate. Thanks for sharing it.

Asphodel is one of my favourite words. I've never seen one.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

I think Mahon's the best poet from Ireland right now. He's absolutley one of my favorites.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.