Another Secret

I

Up to this day I haven’t discovered
The exact location of where I have landed.
Plainly and simply gone astray?

After thirty, forty years at the very outside – a
Grand total of zero seconds in cosmic time – I
Only know that nonrecognition is
Being elsewhere
But being elsewhere could be a temptation
There are lots of merry allotment holders in our universe
Albeit somewhat scattered about.

Yes, gardening. Trying to tell a thing I don’t know.
Some secret I’m still attempting to overhear
Way too tall in the middle of weirdly stunted vegetation.
Blame it on the planet’s inclement climate
Blame it on the Martian thumb.
Blame it on uncharted pests.

Cupping my ear, then laying it to the oft-frozen ground
Valiantly eavesdropping, I hear solar wind, faint borborygmi.
No apt remark, no earthly explanation over here, the
Confessional part of the story must have been spiked.

But by whom? There is nobody around beside
Shreds of self-cultured nature with innocent yet alien looks.
Yeah, looks like home, looks like audience.
We don’t mean, we don’t have to, the
Scribe is still you, they signify.


II

All these darn scrubbinesses
Are eventually mere self-survivors.
No helping hand of mine. I sure tried, but
I’ve reasons to think that I simply made things worse.

No actual knowledge, a bloody helpless goodwill – dear heavens!
If they’ve survived, it’s in spite of my very obstinacies.
If they’ve weathered my treatment, it’s because
They are tough little outlandish bastards.

Ignoramuses.
Oh, I know full well that
Achievement is something else entirely
And I also know full well that the descent beckons

As the ascent beckoned, Mr. Williams, but
This tardy knowledge is of no avail
To pathetic little flowers I simply
Have failed to do away with.

I had sweet dreams of gardening
I thought that with a little information
And my genius I could make a desert flourish;
I then received oodles of data – enough to succeed in

Not drying the place out even more, it remained
A full rig desert with its sparse shrubbery
A genuine genius’s achievement –
Should be happy with that.


May 26, 2011