Introduction	vi
Part One: The Soul of the Garden
The Gardener’s Hand	3
Lines in Response to Vita Sackville West’s Sissinghurst	5
Beatitude	6
The First and Last Thing	7
Winter Dialogue	10
The Plants Who Teach Me All I Know	11
The World That I This Afternoon Destroyed	12
Part Two: Of Small Creatures
Prologue	16
The Deer at Dawn	18
Grass	21
To the Gentle Worm	22
Foxglove	24
To the Nettle	25
The Spider	27
Crocus	28
To the Woodlouse	29
Busy Bee	30
The Ecstasy of the Bee	30
The Nettle in the Basil Pot	32
The Little Grub	34
Part Three: The Songs of Slug
Prologue	38
Lament	43
‘I sing of slug...’	44
‘Slug, How I would be rid of you!’	45
‘I am slug...’	46
‘O slug I see in you...’	48
Pity Slug, his Ugliness Forgive	50
Part Four: Mottoes and Proverbs
Part Five: The Garden of the Soul
I The Gardener	58
The Priesthood	60
When Day on Day	61
The Greenhouse	62
In Deepest Yin	64
When By Moonlight	65
Gardener’s Song 1	67
Gardener’s Song 2	68

PART ONE

THE SOUL OF THE GARDEN

BEATITUDE

Blessed are the gardeners

who see a heaven filled with stars

where the daisies lie in showers

and a golden sun

in every dandelion;

who in the pure light passing

through the white cherry flowers

feel the breath of angels

blow through the hours;

who, as the leaves of spring unfold,

know that through the garden

runs the axis of the world.

WINTER DIALOGUE

‘My plants, my friends, where are you now?

You have gone, gone, withered and gone.

And a dreadful stillness deadens the air –

your life and beauty are no longer there.’

‘We have made our home in another place,

flown so deep in our retreat

we’ve abandoned form, abandoned space,

slipped through the world and into the night,

far away and out of sight.

Yet we’re as close as the breath of your sigh,

close as the pupil of your inner eye.’

‘My plants, my friends, I see you now:

You have come, invisibly you have come,

and a wondrous stillness enlivens the air –

your life and beauty are everywhere.’

THE PLANTS WHO TEACH ME

ALL I KNOW

The plants, who teach me all I know,

have shown me it is part of life

to be frozen and formless

in the dark below.

Dying, the thing that we most dread,

each year they readily embrace:

I bow to them, my friends the plants,

who shed their forms with such good grace.

They give themselves to winter’s night,

and then, when all’s completely lost,

from dark and cold they rise again

and strive, strive, strive for the light.

THE DEER

Once I saw a nimble deer

after a night of storm

come through my fence,

through flowers and mist,

to drink from my pool at dawn.

A stranger from another world

– all grace and sensitivity –

it stood quivering on my lawn.

A familiar voice admonished me

in words I have come to dread:

‘This deer will eat your precious plants

and trample your flowerbeds.

Don’t stand and stare –

be vigilant,

and act from common sense.

If you were a proper gardener

you’d drive it off

and then repair the fence!’

From the upper window

where I stood,

I saw how softly on the grass

the gentle creature trod,

as if the bluebells in the nearby wood

had trained it to tread

upon the ground

as one would tread

the unearthly blue sky overhead,

without crushing so much as a whisp of cloud.

How could I drive it away?

I wanted rather to honour its stay,

by light of sun or moon –

this wandering guest

from the wilderness

who would be gone too soon.

And so I watched

as the mild deer stopped

and mildly drank from my pond,

bestowing on my garden

all the blessing of the wild.

Now time has passed and years gone by

since the deer first used to come:

my plants overflow, more precious than gold,

but my garden fences I still dare

to leave in a state of ill-repair.

And from where my fence is broken

an unseen deerpath runs

that leads to a hidden woodland dell,

where windflowers blow and nettles grow,

where brambles stretch and ferns unfurl

and timid little creatures dwell,

and bluebells turning blue.

Into this woodland garden

the wild deer often stray,

and there by light of sun or moon

I too would find my way.