The Long Walk to the End of the Garden

DAVID HARSENT

The rusty stain on the pillow, the rumble of pain

in his knee, impromptus of a dream in which

he hacked his way out again and again, the dawn

fading up from the green-blue-green of the silver birch,

a flourish on the surface of the pond, a ragged skein

of bindweed on the stone-cold statuette

of that thin-lipped girl from the dream, the odds-on bet

that nothing returns or renews, that the stain

is just what it seems, that the sudden catch

in the throat, the moment of blind regret,

will be all in all, that his way through the garden wet

will take him, for sure, out by the willow-arch

on a morning much like this, and into the lane

beyond which must lie the far field, beyond which

a nameless road, beyond which a landline drawn

in clumsy charcoal below a clumsy sketch

of himself as pseudocide, a frantic silhouette

soon smudged to shadow by incoming rain.