Tide Line Garden

To Stanley Kunitz

With what you know now about a garden by the sea I wish you had seen the one I walked in one evening at the end of summer when I was young

I did not know then that it was a season from which I would number the years that were to come my eyes were still full of the south the bleached slopes and hayfields midday shimmering over the gray stones lichen on parched plum bark

it had been the time of finding the ruined farmhouse half buried under brambles on the ridge where I would be living before long it was that year and we were travelling north up along the coast in the early days of September

the second war was still fresh in people's minds there Ness than a decade after the Normandy landings there was the quiet couple with the farm above the dunes its old doors and windows recently painted sky blue who talked of the nights before the invasion the panzers waiting out under their apple trees the blond young men shouldering into the cellar walking out with their calvados talking loudly calling to the orchard and the couple thinking Drink up Drink up young men a little sorry for them

sitting up listening after the singing was over for the sound of the RAF

that had known where to find those young men at daybreak before they were even awake

the coastal cities were still mostly rubble cobbles piled in the streets Bayeux the stones darkened with rain water running down the broken walls still trickling mortar and the tapestry hanging in the long hall the colors peering through shadows that nobody could do anything about

the sound of feet edging beside that landing in silence like the shuffling of a small wave past Harold standing with the arrow in his eye after most of a thousand years

sun along that coast and the sea wind had fallen late in the day I can remember no other guests at the old house its stones catching the west light off the salt meadows which appeared to reach almost to the horizon with the tide all the way out and flocks of sheep and white geese drifting rimmed in light with their long shadows floating beside them the house had become an inn some time after the war the man in charge must have remembered those years and he was pleased to show the place but scarcely open to questions he said that much had been forgotten and that often that was for the best for a moment the smell of the occupation seeped through the air of the meadows

beside the house a stream ran out to the salt flats walls beyond a courtyard rose to a millpond and a mill with a water wheel still turning in beards of moss that dripped long strands of light

the family always kept it up he said it was still being used even after the war

the family he said was his wife's family and evidently he preferred to say no more

the house must have been a place of substance for centuries perhaps when the Sun King was building Versailles part of an estate or the seat of a functionary and the plain facade the stones of the windows and doorways recalled reigns after that inside it must all have been redone in the years after the Revolution and Napoleon ancient wallpaper upstairs faded by the rays from the meadows When you come down he said there is something that might interest you

in front of the house he pointed along to his right the color of the sunlight on one side of his face the shadow of his arm draped along the hydrangeas under the gray shutters

Down there through the garden he said That used to be the park he said

the wall followed the small road outside that ran above the salt meadows

he had pointed to a broad drive that disappeared under trees planes from the days of the armies of the Emperor something to do with someone in the family then the inevitable cypresses in their dark time

stone edges from later days tumbling into shadows under dusty ferns-and piled branches hydrangeas rusty azaleas

a few old rose bushes sinking into the shade strap leaves of lilies darkened and drying along one side

buried forms of forgotten gardens scarcely detectable making the garden as it was

the drive curved under the low boughs and I could see light at the far end through an iron gate wide enough as the old garden book I had just bought recommended for two carriages to be able to pass each other

the low light came over the wall under the trees and along the drive near the far end I saw a series of dark shapes. solid shadows casting solid shadow extinction appeared to have come that far as I approached I saw the headlights the windshields

armored cars half-tracks gun carriers British undamaged and looking almost new except for the thick colorless film of nescience

I climbed into the first driver's seat everything was there the gauges the instruments the odometer registered fifty-three miles before the garden

where the gates had been open into a place long planned and never foreseen

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated May/Jun 1999
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