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To Garden

It's this bottom-of-the-garden fierce democracy
of leaf and branch -- all the tall green things competing
for the light -- you have to hack at, trying to let
the mountain in, something big to reckon with
at last, beyond brittle fuchsia branches and the awful
blood-drawing, beyond-argument persistence
of briars: how they bow to the blade, then come back.

image of author
Eamon Grennan (1941 - ) is an Irish poet born in Dublin. He has lived in the United States, except for brief periods, since 1964. He is Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English at Vassar College. Though his Irish roots are clear in his poetry, Grenna... READ MORE >