Written following a splendid day at Kew
Leave the shadows behind –
Shadows are for a dull day.
Go with the sun on a September morning
Go with the friends who will take you there.
Take you where? Why, to Kew, of course –
Wide lakes of grass and the scent of old summers,
This summer dying now, but still alive with colour –
Sunflower and cyclamen and the fading splendour of old rose.
Travel by chair – with a close friend behind –
The chair rides smoothly as if it had wings –
But of course it has no wings, only the faithful friend
Who gives you time to ‘stand and stare’ –
To see the long green distances,
Avenues that ride between the tall trees into the mists of the sun.
Into the Palm House where the air is darkened by leaves,
Where the tropic warmth and the moist air
Touch you with a different wonder,
And in the shadow of the jungle trees you find strange constructions –
Glass imaginings like a wizard’s twisted dream,
Shapes of every colour, strident as the playground of a child.
The day glides on – already it’s afternoon –
The fountain has turned silver and the water sleek with shadow –
Not long before evening when the great spaces will lie empty,
Lotus and water lily bloom unseen,
And the gates will close.
I am not – alas! – Andrew Marvell, but will borrow from his Garden:
“Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness….
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.”
Diana Raymond
September 13th 2005
Diana Raymond