Elegy In A Botanic Gardens
HE smell of birds' nests faintly burning Is autumn.
In the autumn I came Where spring had used me better, To the clear red pebbles and the men of stone And foundered beetles, to the broken Meleager And thousands of white circles drifting past, Cold suns in water; even to the dead grove Where we had kissed, to the Tristania tree Where we had kissed so awkwardly, Noted by swans with damp, accusing eyes, All gone to-day; only the leaves remain, Gaunt paddles ribbed with herringbones Of watermelon-pink.
Never before Had I assented to the hateful name Meryta Macrophylla, on a tin tag. That was no time for botany.
But now the schools, The horticulturists, come forth Triumphantly with Latin.
So be it now, Meryta Macrophylla, and the old house, Ringed with black stone, no Georgian Headlong Hall With glass-eye windows winking candles forth, Stuffed with French horns, globes, air-pumps, telescopes And Cupid in a wig, playing the flute, But truly, and without escape,
HE
AL
UM, Repeated dryly in Roman capitals,
HE
AL
UM.
Kenneth Slessor
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