The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

I am a gardener,

A maker of trials, flowers, hypotheses.

I water the earth.

I raise perfumes there.

Mother told me to stand, and I did so,

Stepping towards the window in which she sat.

“Now, did you find him, your other half?

And mine,” she said, and I shook my head:

“No, my time is so short and I’ll take no oath.”

“You’ve just taken one, by standing,

My dear one,” she said, and she told me how the stars

Had said as much, and I concurred and saw

How the crystalware of the polished table,

The cabinets of glass things walling the room,

The tall roses beyond the glass, the gloss of the table,

Had said as much in sunshine from my first tottering.

So she lifted my hand and kissed it and said I was to be celibate,

And this was great good fortune and I was a good child

For I had a quest and few had as much.

The roses nodded.

So I became a gardener,

A maker of prayers, flowers, hypotheses.

A gardener “washed in my fertile sweat,”

My hair of an opulent brown “like the Lord’s,

That makes you think of fertile fields.”

And among the flowers, in the walled garden, “This is life!” she cried,

“What a shame, oh what a shame,” she said,

“What a shame we have to die,” she cried, all

The flowers pumping their natures into her, and plumping

Into her nostrils, winged wide, she leaning,

Leaning back, breathing deeply, blushing deeply,

Face shining and deep breath and tall brick

Holding the air still and the heat high in a tall room.

And I swam in the thunderstorm in the river of blood, oil and cider,

And I saw the blue of my recovery open around me in the water,

Blood, cider, rainbow, and the apples still warm after sunset

Dashed in the cold downpour, and so this mother-world

Opened around me and I lay in the perfumes after rain out of the river

Tugging the wet grass, eyes squeezed, straining to the glory,

The burst of white glory like the whitest clouds rising to the sun

And it was like a door opening in the sky, it was like a door opening in the water,

It was like the high mansion of the sky, and water poured from the tall french

windows.

It was like a sudden smell of fur among the flowers, it was like a face at dusk

It was like a rough trouser on a smooth leg. Oh, shame,

It was the mother-world wet with perfume. It was something about God.

And she stood there and I wanted to tell her something and she was gone.

It was something about God. She stood smiling on the wet verge

And she waited for me to tell her but she was gone.

And three gusts of hot dry air came almost without sound

Through the bushes, and she went. Through the bushes

Of blown and bruised roses. And she went. And the bushes were blown

And the gusts were hot, dry air, nearly black with perfume,

Alive with perfume. Oh shame. It was like an announcement,

Like an invitation, an introduction, an invitation, a quick smile in the dusk.

It was like a door opening on a door of flowers that opened on flowers that were

opening.

It was like the twist of a rosy fish among lily-pads that were twisting on their deep

stems.

The rosy goldfish were there in the dusky pond, but she was gone.

It was something about God. My hand made a wet door in the water

And I thought of something I knew about God. My mother

Stared at me from the pool over my shoulder and when I turned she was gone.

Then the wind blew three hot dry gusts to me through the broken rose-bushes

And she came to me dusky with perfume and I walked towards her

And through her, groping for her hand. And it was something about God.

And I searched in my head for it with my eyes closed. But it was gone.

And I became a gardener, a hypothesiser, one who would consult his sensations,

For “we live in sensations and where there are none there is no life,”

One with the birds that are blue-egged because they love the sky!

With the flocks of giraffes craning towards the heavens!

With the peacocks dressed in their love for the high sun

And in their spectra of the drifting rains, one

With the great oaks in my keeping that stretched up to touch God!

And one who could look up gladly and meet God’s gaze,

His wide blue gaze, through my blood, as I think;

And God was silent and invisible and I loved him for it,

I loved him for his silent invisibility, for his virile restraint,

And I was one with my peacocks that sent out their wild cry

Sounding like shrill “help!” and meaning no such thing,

While my flocks of deer wrote love in their free legs

Their high springy haunches and bounding turf. And they would pause

And look upwards, and breathe through wide nostrils, and all day

It was wide and firm and in God’s gaze and open: tussock and turf, long lake,

Reed-sigh, silence and space, pathway and flower furnace

Banked up and breathing.

And the people. And the causeway into the walled garden.

And the people walking in so slowly, on their toes

Through the wide doorway, into the cube of still air,

Into the perspective of flowers, following each other in groups,

Gazing around, “Oh, what shame, to die!” and the great doorway

And ourselves, smiling, and standing back, and they changed,

Concentrated, concentrating, at the edges of the body, the rims

Tighter, clearer, by the sensations of their bodies, solidified, bound,

Like the angels, the bodies’ knowledge of the flowers inbound

Into its tightening and warming at the heart of flowers, the fire called

“Then-shall-ye-see-and-your-heart-shall-rejoice—

And-your-bones-shall-sprout-as-the-blade.. ..”

And she was gone. And she lay down like the earth after rain.

It was love-talk in every grain. And something about God.

The brick walls creaked in the wind, grain to grain.

And judgement came as the father comes, and she is gone.

Clouds swoop under the turf into the pond, the peacock cries

“Help!” strutting in its aurora, love talks

Grain to grain, gossiping about judgement, his coming. Ranges

Tumble to boulders that rattle to shingles that ease to wide beaches

That flurry to dust that puffs to new dusts that dust

To dusting dust, all talking, all

Gossiping of glory, and there are people

In the gardens, in white shirts, drifting,

Gossiping of shame through the gardens. “Oh glory!”

Through the gardens. . . . Well, father, is that how you come?

Come then.

Whose breath is it that flares through the shrubberies?

Whose breath that returns? Look at the people

All ageing to judgement, all

Agreeing to judgement. Look at that woman

Still snuffing up the flowers. My mother!

Look at her. She bends backwards to the tall flowers, falls.

Her flower-laden breath returns to the skies.

I think this garden is a prayer,

Shall I burn it as an offering?

And I think these people are a prayer,

I think they are a message.

Shall I burn them for their syllable?

There is a fire crying “shame!” here already!

It mixes dying with flowering.

I think we husk out uttering. I think

We tip it out. Our perfect syllable,

Tripped out over the death-bed, a one,

Round, perfectly-falling silence.

Look how they seek the glory over these flowers!

I wanted to say something about God,

My syllable about God. I think

We are a prayer. I think

He wants his breath back, unhusked

Of all the people, our dying silences,

Our great involuntary promise

Unhusked, flying out into the rain, over the battlefields,

Switching through shrubberies, into the sky. . . .

You press, oh God!

You press on me as I press on an eyeball,

You press sunsets and autumns and dying flowers,

You press lank ageing people in gardens “Oh shame

To die,” you press roses and matchflames like wisps of your fingers,

Your great sun cuffs age at us. I will bring,

I will bring you in, father, through the bounds of my senses,

Face to face, father, through the sockets of my head,

Haul you in, father, through my eyes with my fingers,

Into my head through my eyes, father, my eyes, oh my eyes. . . .

To live in the blind sockets, the glorious blunt passages,

Tended by gardeners, nostril, eye, mouth,

Bruised face in a white shirt ageing,

To be called “Father” and to hear call high

“Oh shame, what a shame, to die” as they see the great flowers,

To hear the peacock “help!” that means no such thing,

And to live unseeing, not watching, without judging, called “Father.”