The Gardener's Letter

Mademoiselle,

I'm taking up the pen to give you news

of the garden. It's very pretty right now.

If you come at Easter or later, as in the Spring,

you will see it. It got up this morning

All damp with your memory. It's full

of flowers which you recommended to me:

The provincial cloth of thoughts

rose breads everywhere

The powdered ash of the lilacs, so graceful

And the wisterias with soft bodies

which you call floating flowers

The paralyzed lily dying before my door.

There are flowers and flowers of all sorts!

From the blue flies which are called forget-me-nots

To the pink butterflies of sins.

The irises and gladioli are bearing this year

and give forth rockets and spindles from here, from there, in profusion.

But all of this is bored and longing for Mademoiselle,

And even though the weather's been good since last Christmas,

Joy is waiting to come until you do.

God, the melancholy which all of us here feel!

For a tree without a nest, for the garden without you.

Mademoiselle, believe in all of my memories.