The road winds unpredictably about Pascal's estate,
'Least, so complains a certain bloke who traveled it of late,
In coming to return a book he'd borrowed and perused,
Was wearied by the blasted thing and felt himself abused,
(He'd borrowed it that winter from my master's library
Which he keeps for his convenience at the Port-Royal Society)
Jonathan Swift, I mean, for by the sheerest accident
They are the best of friends, although of different sentiments.
And where was I, you ask yourself, that I so well recall?
Why, I'm the gent's own gardener and overheard it all!
I'll tell you all about it too, if you would be so kind
To suffer informality and let me drop this rhyme.
A bit of such perfection makes the finest introduction
But you'd soon loose your taste for it with constant repetition,
And I can't keep such language up, nor could you, I conceive,
Unless your'e better born than I, and that I won't believe.
I was half-way up the ladder with my pruning-shears in hand,
Pruning a tree I should have pruned a day or so ago,
When I saw him half-way down the road and heard him curse the land.
He gave a stone a hearty kick and gave the sky a shout
But his anger's sole success was to rebuke himself, I know.
I watched him as he slowly limped across the stable yard.
Pascal was sitting lost in thought beneath the very tree.
Indeed, they never saw me there and to this very day
Neither knows that I was hearing every word they said.
It was a sunny afternoon, close to three I'd say
When John Swift stumbled through the gate and shook the dust away.
"Pascal, I say, you've built your house a damn long way from town
And give a man a ways to walk to bring a book and turn around again!"
"Swift! How long has it been since the Port-Royal Inn
When we entered our great drinking contest,
When you wagered whoever drank more than his measure
Was more of a man than the other?
Four months I conjecture, it still was cold weather,
You drank me right under the table!
And if you're not the better man,
At least you are more able!
But come, sit down, there's room for two,
Talk and rest awhile.
Admire the products of my art,
My sole joy and distraction."
"What shall we talk about?"
"The book, of course!
I'm anxious to hear your thoughts upon the matter.
I see you have a marker in the middle."
"Middle indeed!
I thought it was the beginning
Or perhaps the end,
But middle, it could never serve as middle.
This book has a surplus of beginnings and ends
And is sorely in need of a middle.
Mister Aristotle would not think kindly
Of such deficiencies."
"To h*e*ll with Aristotle.
What did you think of what it had to say?"
"Oh, please, I really wish you would discuss it.
I loaned it to you for a special reason.
You weren't half so intractable as this
The night I was defeated in our contest.
It was part of our bargain.
You said you'd read it over if I'd play."
"That was before I knew what it was about!
I'm adamant.
If we talk at all, we'll talk of something different."
"By all means, then, out of regard for you,
No further words about the book will ever pass between us.
I give you my promise, as good as the word Jehovah gave to Moses."
I felt myself an awkward bird in my ungainly nest,
Watching to see what scheme would hatch
From this strange conversation.
I left my ladder while the gentlemen were getting seated,
Crawling out upon a limb whose angles fit my features.
To hear him treat my master so, I thought to take my shears
And prune this fellow's haughty ways a little at the ears.
I was dissuaded by my present delicate situation,
And greatly feared discovery when my foot chanced to dislodge
An over-ripened apple which dropped in their conversation.
"Damn, an apple!" Swift cried out, "It nearly broke my skull!"
"Your head is far to hard, I fear, to let an apple dent it."
"Your garden is too cramped, I fear, to possibly prevent it."
"Cramped? What do you mean?
I've spent some years in planning this estate
Constructed from meticulous design
Which I devised according to some geometric laws.
Everything is most purposefully placed
And has a cause behind it, either from utility or beauty,
Though principally from beauty, I would say."
"If this were my estate, I'd build it very differently.
I'd let the hedges gain some height,
and put a lock upon the garden gate.
I'd move the stable closer to the house."
"Those beasts are just as well off where they are."
"You've grown too gentile in your ways.
Although I never cared for gardens, or for country life.
Give me a city!
If you want a garden, take a king's garden or a grand park,
With statues of Heros and Muses along the walks,
And mazes, to amuse the gentlewomen.
If you wanted country life,
You should have been a farmer
Like your farmer-neighbor down the road a ways,
The furrows in his fields as orderly,
As if he'd used a straightedge, not a plow.
You want to be a farmer without the sweat.
I'd hardly call your estate a work of art.
Why, look at your garden hedge.
There's not one angle in it to be found.
That makes your garden look more like some egg.
It doesn't even have a front or back.
And just these two trees standing in the center.
This place falls short of a garden, and more so of art.
It's hardly fit to entertain a friend
Who comes upon a Sunday afternoon."
"Your'e wrong on one thing, Jonathan,
I'm far from growing soft on my estate.
And for another, this is something more than just a garden.
It's more, I'm sure, than you suspect it is."
"More than I suspect!
What parable is this?
Have you some critic buried underneath us?"
"If you want a grave,
You'll find the churchyard half-way up the road.
And as for that solemn gentleman you mentioned,
It's even more than critics would expect.
This garden serves as paradigm of sorts,
Or diagram to aid me in my vision.
I sit here days and wander its perspectives.
I am a sedentary traveller."
"Sendentary traveller? What kind is that?"
"The best!
Quite like Odysseus in retrospect,
In Ithaca reflecting in his garden
Upon a man encountered in his journey,
Or even more, like Homer by a fire
As he reflected on the Odyssey.
What fruits this yields lie in one's point of view.
As for the garden, it is its own fruit,
Ripening in the light of my understanding.
It takes on different shades from day to day.
And just this afternoon it came to be
The most revealing land I've ever been to."
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by abigael
