I read this poem just now and found myself listening to its sounds : rather like the pulse of a human heart or the ticking of a clock in the corner of life’s room. I almost feel like I am holding someone’s wrist and counting out each pulse, each possibly diminishing breath.
How easeful and affecting to rhyme the last word of a line with the first of the next. This Gives the poem enough momentum for courage and admission. The poet is brave enough to know what wonder he has enjoyed is finite.
Yet the finite also makes our lives remarkable, reveals the reason we may grieve to leave. I love the gentle , affectionate simplicity of,’ glad to have sat under thunder and rain with you.’ More convincing and moving than any excessive outpouring of love.
The sounds of this poem are likes a series of echoes. I can hear the past recurring, reminding us that separations of one experience from another are illusory, except for the final separation of this world from the next.
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.