The Garden of Earthly Delights

 for Carolyn Trant

  

 1                                         

 

I am the child of a bird

the dark robin's child

I am the child of the fruit

 

A hoopoe, yellow or blue

thumbs a berry

in the stab of a beak,

looks after me sternly

 

Clone of a jay

brings me a berry

as big as my head

 

We fruit in the beaks

and the branches of a garden

without end                                                            

that never had a gate,

never a seed scattered,

a hand on a spade

 

In the garden

what is wrong is put right,

our bodies fruit with bodies,

our bodies dive and swim

 

I carry a fish for my pride

for my second head

 

A bird is my head

is the eye that thinks and winks

 

Nothing is right so

nothing is wrong

in the labyrinthine fruits

of the garden of delight - 

 

 

2

 

We crawl, throstlings

into summer's caves,                                         

into the flesh of pomegranates,

strawberries, burst translucent

beads of the wild rose,

gift of our wicked nurses

owl, jay, rat, mouse -

 

I talk my nonsense

to the owl's surprise

She likes my jokes, bird

of thought, her eye

is a dark home

 

We crawl into our flesh

Silly, it doesn't quite work

 

I talk to our mouths,

to our backsides

All is one and one is all

Every mouth is wrong

and every mouth is right

 

3

 

A bird stoops to stab me

I crawl into my flesh

Flesh swallows me,

swallows you -

 

Each bird bends

its beady eyes to love

 

comical love, that clown,

buffoon of buttocks and breasts

 

I gawp at your head

You squint through the hole 

  

Delight is wholly a garden,

holy fruit, the holes in fruit,

ripe, rotting - ever the

fruit runs riot, and ripens -

                                  

Anyone can squirm through,

you, me and Sesame -

                                        

Open wide - what

word or womb or which wide?                           

 

A family joke,

a joke of leaves and birds

 

Faces of innocence

and alabaster arses

we're all here

happy as blue jays

green as woodpeckers

 

Sharp as the point of flight

 

All is one is one and one is all

every mouth is wrong

and every mouth is right -

 

4

 

Your foot sticks through

the rind, my head pops out

Nothing's a surprise,

what's wrong is right

 

Swap me a bird head

for two wagging feet

 

Join the parade, canter, crawl,

what's wrong is best of all

 

ride inside a husk, a haw, a hip,

dig where your hands like,

you'll find the talking food

 

and juice is full of running words

and words are flesh

are leaf, belief,

whichever way you fall

 

Sentences are branch and arm

Forest is word, flesh, beak, desire

Berries are my castle 

 

 

Whatever's wrong is right

and winter's gone for good

and gone to bad

Winter cannot wax

as red as autumn berries

 

The mouths of birds,                

mountainous birds, long-legged,

are crammed with all I need

 

just what I need,

to live in an orange

 

to gush in the fountain

that never dries, never dies

 

                 5

 

I dive into my life,

water falls around my black skin

glossy as an elderberry

 

in the bird harvest

in the zenith

sloshing in the pool

I'm sure I'll live forever

 

I'm the harvest of birds,

their round eyes spot us,

hanging, falling. We are

the bird who spots the

round, the lozenge, the hip, haw,

the blueberry rolling -

 

We creep, we jostle

to our fleshy dens

into our fleshpots

forever and amen

 

In then out

stick in your head

stick out your foot

one foot in, two heads out

 

Not a foot wrong

and all is right

What's wrong is best foot first,

pure delight

Splosh in, you can't go right

or wrong, you and I -

Gush of delight!

 

6

 

O fierce bird

stab me, guard me

so I never die

 

The spurt of the fountain -

Never dry up, never die

I'm sure I'll never grow old

 

I am the fool

of the comic garden

 

I'm the fool and the food,

the child in the belly of the fruit

My mother's the bird of desire

 

Nothing is right 

and nothing is wrong  

forever and ever and ever

in the garden of earthly delight.         

 

 

In 2003 Parvenu Press published A Response to Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, a now highly sought after limited-edition artist's book with images by Carolyn Trant and an accompanying poem by Judith Kazantzis. 'My poem,' commments Judith, 'which is inspired by the notion of Bosch's circular procession of creatures and humans narrates and counterpoints Carolyn's images. The art book is a collector's piece, and available only in certain specialist art libraries. This is the first publication of the poem outside the book.'