Landscape — A Poem
i don’t have a garden i / never had one, i have realized today.
i don’t see flowers in my garden today
they are hidden underneath white
mush of snow / perhaps.
the little birds which used to / welcome
me every evening
are undergoing wing transplants.
and the trees
under whose shade i used / to make
love with squirrels of other castes
are singing carols in a mosque.
the garden does not look / happy
today.
it looks like a wilted flower i used
to hold in my fingers to offer
to a beloved / in my dreams.
i don’t have a garden i / never
had one, i have realized today.
i am not walking on snow
either / but
a sapling lives, a sapling
is my hope.
P.S. — The poem also (not wholly) alludes to the famed garden of Voltaire (in his Candide). He says: “We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.”
The poem is a yearning for that lost Eden, which the poet persona had shared with a loved one, once. Even if in the domain of his dreams.
