#169: The Garden Edition

Hi,

I’m sending this newsletter from Alipore, from the room where The Alipore Post was born. The passage of time never fails to amaze me. I’ve no idea how it’s almost the end of the year (again), how my niece turned five today, and how it’s going to be seven years of sending out this newsletter next February.

Life is like a garden, which needs tenderness, attention, patience and enough water and sunlight to grow. As my dear Henri Matisse said, “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

This rendition of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss by Studio Joyeeta titled Amar klimt has been giving me life today. So wholesome and nurturing. Felt apt to share it here today.

Amar klimt by Studio Joyeeta (DM them directly for prints)

If you’re someone who enjoys gardening, spending time in nature or just growing as a person, here are ten poems with gardening references that I read over the last month. I highly recommend reading them aloud and savouring the taste of the words on your mouth.

POETRY CORNER

Woodcut by Gordon Mortensen

1. Why You Should Go Outside at 4:40 am in November by Rosemary Royston

   Because it is more silent than you can imagine
   and above you the moon is a nickel
   glinting from the unseen sun,
   surrounded by broken crystals.
   With the limbs of the bare trees
   web-spread like arteries,
   under a sky whose shade
   has yet to be named
   you will find your mouth agape,
   eyes lifted as your knees
   sink into the fallow garden,
   praying, regardless of belief.

2. Dewdrop by Misuzu Kaneko
   
   Let’s not tell anyone.
   
   In the corner of the garden this morning,
   a flower shed a tear.
   
   If word of this spreads
   to the ears of the bee,
   
   it’ll feel it’s done wrong
   and go back to return the nectar.
   

3. If Words are Seeds by R.H. Swaney

   If words are seeds,
   let flowers grow
   from your mouth,
   not weeds.
   If heart are gardens,
   plant those flowers
   in the chest of the ones
   who exist around you.

4. Sonnets from the Portuguese 44: Beloved, thou has brought me many flowers by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

   Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
   Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
   And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
   In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers,
   So, in the like name of that love of ours,
   Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
   And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
   From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers
   Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
   And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine,
   Here’s ivy!— take them, as I used to do
   Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
   Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
   And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

5. godspeak: kingdom come by Lucille Clifton
   
   you, with your point-blank fury
   what if I told you
   this is all there ever was:
   this earth, this garden, this woman
   this one precious, perishable kingdom.
   

6. For My Grandmother by Countee Cullen
   
   This lovely flower fell to seed;
   Work gently, sun and rain;
   She held it as her dying creed
   That she would grow again.

7. Rose Garden, Summer Solstice by Carolyn Miller

   Everyone here believes that the roses
   are blooming only for them, here where the air
   by the formal beds is layered with the scent
   of roses. From deep in their flushed and darkening hearts
   pour odors of lemons and pepper, apricots, honey,
   vanilla and myrrh and musk and semen, apples and quince,
   raspberries and wine and ocean, the faint
   scent of blood and the fragrance of death and the breath
   of the life we are living now, in this place
   where the roses are blooming for each of us, alone.

8. In Mother’s Garden by Khaty Xiong
   
   Quietly now a mouse in the garden
   that has come to mourn with me
   or bite at every insect twisting
   in this heat as you lie close & uncaring
   in the army of the common housefly.
   Let it be known that in death
   you harrowed in love & in so doing
   traded your ears for blackened ones,
   your crown the shade of a new moon.
   Let this spell be known as the fortune
   of a missing tortoise, brutal limbs
   & wounds of multiples. Then, to soften
   alongside the watermelon rinds
   on this blighted day, your body
   presently absent including the mouse
   I have startled into darkness. Who will
   help me love the castor bean tree now?
   Which of these plants will speak for you?
   Ignore me while I weave between rows,
   swatting at the light I have chased into
   the corner of your makeshift shed still full
   of your fortune, the abundant secret
   of mouse droppings. Meanwhile, stay
   dressed—help me be decent. Come away
   from dreams, far from streets—quick,
   arise in one piece! There is shade.
   Even the sun could not spoil you.

9. An Observation by May Sarton

   True gardeners cannot bear a glove
   Between the sure touch and the tender root,
   Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
   With a rough sensitivity about
   Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
   Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
   And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,
   She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
   With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
   I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
   But now her truth is given me to live,
   As I learn for myself we must be hard
   To move among the tender with an open hand,
   And to stay sensitive up to the end
   Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.

10. Lemon Seed by Holly Prado

    impossible to pick it up. the oily outer coating catches on the kitchen
    counter and begs to grow, even where there’s no soil, the ones I did
    manage to plant lived for three years—never trees, but the flat leaves
    could be rubbed for odor and pleasure, there are ways to live that have
    nothing to do with righteousness, only with the urge to persist. I have
    no imagination these days, though I see what’s close by to look at: the
    palm in my living room is beginning to scatter its spores. I sweep them
    up. they escape to farther corners than I can reach. it occurs to me
    that the first step in loving someone else is to love something slippery.

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RECOMMENDED LISTENING

via

• Repurposed barcode scanners produce glitchy electronic beats

• Sounds from Mars

• The Music Project: Airport

• Ode to Joy + Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 flash performance in Spain

• The Lost Music Video for The Fresh Prince & DJ Jazzy Jeff’s 'A Nightmare On My Street'

• Call My Name - Smile (Ft Robyn) (Smile is the side project of Björn Yttling (of Peter Bjorn and John) and Joakim Åhlund (of Teddybears and Caesars))

• O Fino Do Violão - Paulinho Nogueira

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LINKS OF THE WEEK

Art by Javi Aznarez

• I can’t get enough of Javi Aznarez’s poster series of The French Dispatch!

• Illustrators in conversation: Adrian Tomine and Wendy MacNaughton ❤️

• Moths in Slow Motion

• hākārā, a bilingual journal of creative expression

• Remarkable Trees Throughout The World

• Learning to Respond Not React - Tara Brach (still learning)

• Akar Prakar’s Battles and Dalliances

• Japanese Philosophies That’ll Help You Spend Money Consciously

• In conversation with Tishani Doshi on her latest poetry collection A God at the Door

• How to make a map of your mind (via Austin Kleon, who recently made the shift to Substack!)

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Ending this newsletter with this powerful reminder by Matt Haig to keep and finding our way back to ourselves. Thank you for consistently reminding me of the strength in vulnerability, Matt.

Take care of yourself, gentle reader. You are not just THIS you.

Hugs,
Rohini