Breaking and Entering

What are the summer pansies doing
surviving the new year,
summer and winter blooming side by side?
the magnolia in budding
long before the spring?
And even the grape hyacinth
unwraps itself
and challenges the elements
in a show of sheer bravado, as the whole
of nature now breaks out
of what has always been
its given sequence. Dismantling
the old created order, following
the lead of man - who might perhaps
have nudged it this way by a notch or two -
it seems the perfect stranger. In a moment
we see meaning breaking loose from
a small rose that lost its bearings,
as the sun might break from a dark cloud.


We have entered here into
some sort of dark conspiracy
with what we see before us. Rose,
pansies, hyacinth and even
the magnolia are founder members, maybe,
of a wholly new and startling sequence
which in due course will be broken in its turn.
We may be entering an inexplicable,
unheralded and unfamiliar circle
that nature will sculpt into some new shape.
Yet still they prophesy, those
merchants of great doom,
as though the old is still the valid form.


It is the will of man that breaks beneath the strain.
What is dead is broken down,
has entered earth for its reviving.
What is dying
is breaking down to enter in.
What is revived is flying.
Time is flying, but the time is not quite yet.


Mankind has left the circle. Broken from
the evening of existence, entered in
a second childhood. See, his toys
are more sophisticated this time round.
He leaves them everywhere.
The roses, pansies, the magnolia and the hyacinth
are warnings in the snow.
They say the circle, broken out from,
still exists to take its toll.


The earth is waiting. Still from earth
only the plants and tiny creatures break.
Man can but enter to be satisfied.