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The Garden
Dense boughs and variegated blooms
__That once festooned a garden
Are dying as November births
__Pellucid forms that harden
On them, my attic’s roof, and grass.
Now every morning when I pass
__This place, once deeply green,
A stark, white blandness greets my eyes;
__No colour’s to be seen.
But still, I thank the gardener who,
With high élan, prepared the view
__For all to like last spring.
He knows: next April, once again,
__This fertile spot will bring
Fresh leaves and blossoms like before.
I step into the garden’s door
__Located in my heart
And wish to plant sweet buds of love
__For those now far apart—
Shunned kindred and deserted friends—
So when my wintertime ascends
__And I begin to harden,
Watching my frame, they’ll think about
__The joy drawn from this garden
Whose soil will never yield again.
first published by Sparks of Calliope
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Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India, where he resides with his parents. His poems have been published by Sparks of Calliope, The Hypertexts, Snakeskin, Ink Sweat & Tears, Autumn Sky Daily, Ekstasis, among others. He received second place in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.
Your sad and poignant poem is beautifully descriptive Shamik! Thank you so much for this evocative piece so full of wonderful imagery. I also enjoyed the structure and clever rhyme scheme; the repetition of the rhymes in the first and last stanza but swapped around, as you address your own wintertime.
Precious poem saturated with heartfelt sensations and sentiments. Your poem speaks to all of us with the wish that when we are hardened, others will remember us with fondness.
The linkage between the outer world and the inner world is a standard theme in poetry, and might even be said to have inevitable dominance. What a poet says must address the external world and refer to it, but it always contains his personal voice and perception.
A garden is a special example. By definition it is controlled and cultivated by human hands, and is therefore singular and aesthetically complex (unlike raw nature). Linking the rebirth of a garden with the rebirth of love for those from whom the speaker is alienated (“Shunned kindred and deserted friends”) highlights the major difference between nature and human beings — there is no question that spring will come again, but there is no guarantee that estrangement and alienation will ever be cured.
The speaker wants to plant “sweet buds of love / For those now far apart” but the final line of the poem shows his deep skepticism about the possibility. Will alienated friends and kin remember him with kindness and with recollection of past shared joys? He hopes so, but he says that the soil in his garden “will never yield again.”
Hilaire Belloc said that the saddest thing in the world is estrangement.
A melancholy piece that reminded me of ‘The Secret Garden’, where friendships ended up being formed, and relationships mended.
Thanks for the read, Shamik.
Dear Shamik,
You have made the connection to yet another of the endless analogies between nature and human experience. I cannot take a walk in the woods without finding some comparison.
I just read, “A Grief Observed,” by C. S. Lewis. I have been thinking about his statement, “I had yet to learn that al human relationships end in pain – it is the price that our imperfection has allowed Satan to exact from us for the privilege of love.” Somehow I had never noticed before that it is inevitable that all love, this side of eternity, will end in pain, whether by discord, distance, drift, or death.
Your “wish to plant sweet buds, for those now far apart” is a beautiful yet risky desire. I have found that the efforts to restore have resulted in rejection or surprising fruit; I believe the risk is worth it.
Thank you for such a lovely poem to read and think about.
Gigi
This is beautiful, and I agree with Isabella about the very interesting form, especially the rhyme scheme.
Such a lovely, layered poem. There is a sadness to it, and still an uplifting tone.
Shamik, thank you for this poignant and beautiful poem. As time accelerates its inexorable march, in the autumn of my years your wistful words carry a special relevance.
Shamik, this poem has elegance as well as beauty. Others have admired your portrayal of its all-important emotion, but I’d like to notice the handsome structure of your rhyme scheme: xAxab bcxcd dexef fgxgh haxAx, where x is an unrhymed line and capital A is “garden,” your refrain word. Because “The Garden” is your title, it’s the crucial word, and you have evenly placed it throughout the poem. “Garden” is a rhyme word in stanzas 1 and 5; we find the “gardener” in stanza 2, and the “garden’s door” in stanza 4. The central stanza 3 speaks of the garden’s pleasant past and future as a “fertile spot” in springtime. This is important to recall as you move into its door during the sad season of present time rapidly sinking into ice and chill.
See how lettered lines in the scheme make an alphabetical progression, like the progression in time you depict. But the unrhymed x’s provide a symmetric framework which is meaningful as a beautiful enclosure.
These are small things in relation to your development of your topic to great effect upon your readers. And your subtle expression of gratitude to the gardener who oversees all. But they show you to have learned well from his craftsmanship.
In my recent crazily whimsical poem, “Old Chestnut,” I put in the “Assam” image hoping you might smile at it.
Lyrical, beautiful, and spiritual. Shamik, I love it!