Tuesday Sonnet: The Garland

When I was young, I used to take the flowers
From home, my square green garden, up your slope.
But then, since I’d eroded all my hours
(Which left me one by one, like bars of soap
Consumed without a mind) in thinking how
I could explain the storms you sowed in me,
I left, instead of acts, a garland’s glow.
That was my folly: I would never free
My tongue again from its inveigling thorn.
The seasons passed – and, by the fall,
I knew I was the fool: I saw the scorn
The flesh for symbol holds, when just like all
The good in me which language failed to speak,
Each flower fell to pieces or grew weak.