No Garden

No garden; no pastoral pasture in which to roam
or to bemoan the loss of; no wand’ring wise
o’er hill, in dale, through copse and wooded grove
while gathering swallows twitter in the skies;
no hook-billed, web-footed cormorants,
sea-crusted coral, thornèd rose, bleached
carapace of desert dweller, dance
of dew-drop, willow’s sigh, or night-hawk’s shriek
above a liquid crypt of cataract
or vasty deep or old mill stream; no limpid,
sympathetic love that we extract
from that which is not us, who clutch with fervid
need—I belong! I belong!—convinces me.
Not there in life. Not here in death’s sad poetry.