Cabbage Gardens
By Susan Howe
The past
will overtake
alien force
our house
formed
of my mind
to enter
explorer
in a forest
of myself
for all
my learning
Solitude
quiet
and quieter
fringe
of trees
by a river
bridges black
on the deep
the heaving sea
a watcher stands
to see her ship
winging away
Thick noises
merge in moonlight
dark ripples
dissolving
and
defining
spheres
and
snares
Place of importance as in the old days
stood on the ramparts of the fort
the open sea outside
alone with water-birds and cattle
knee-deep in a stream
grove of reeds
herons watching from the bank
henges
whole fields honeycombed with souterrains
human
bones through the gloom
whose sudden mouth
surrounded my face
a thread of blue around the coast
feathery moon
eternity swallows up time
peaceable as foam
O cabbage gardens
summer’s elegy
sunset survived
Copyright Credit: Susan Howe, excerpt from “Cabbage Gardens” from Frame Structures: Early Poems, 1974-1979. Copyright © 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1996 by Susan Howe. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1996)