They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Go ahead: say what you're thinking. The garden is not the real world. Machines are the real world. Say frankly what any fool could read in your face: it makes sense to avoid us, to resist nostalgia. It is not modern enough, the sound the wind makes stirring a meadow of daisies: the mind cannot shine following it. And the mind wants to shine, plainly, as machines shine, and not grow deep, as, for example, roots. It is very touching, all the same, to see you cautiously approaching the meadow's border in early morning, when no one could possibly be watching you. They longer you stand at the edge, the more nervous you seem. No one wants to hear impressions of the natural world: you will be laughed at again; scorn will be piled on you. As for what you're actually hearing this morning: think twice before you tell anyone what was said in this field and by whom.
"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
One of these boats carried Mary, put to sea by the Romans, the crying woman, hands wrapped with rags that smell of myrrh. And...
