‘My garden is made of stone’ – Mark E Smith (Psykick Dance Hall)

‘My garden is all overgrown’ – Tony McPhee  (Garden)

With a front door opening straight onto the street

you have to be careful you don’t let the heat out,

that’s how that global warming started.

And all that dust on your shoes

it ruins the carpet.

Flesh of Victorian brick, and below,

the bones of a forgotten dream,

alive only in his imagination.

Resonances and vibrations,

pouring balm on bricks and mortar,

striving to heal old wounds,

those slights upon the character of the landscape.

And when you walked with her to the pool,

what did you know of all this?

This layer upon that, you call it old

but it was merely last year’s modern. Remember?

Crested newt and floating beer can.

The odour of festering drains and

dust of crumbling brick.

These were hills, those were fields

And through this shady dell

flowed a musical stream.

Ghosts and shadows crouch at every turn.

Scratch and they bleed,

speak and they flee.

Jerusalem the Golden,

that artichoke of the soul,

an echo in Annie’s memory.

Rheinhardt takes her by the hand

and joins her helter-skelter walk.

Unsteady, with cider breath, she wanders

through one landscape,

following the map of another.