A Feast in the Garden
                                                                  – For George Konrád

Worried, what with his women and walls and wealth,
poor Solomon wisely bade a scribe to describe

the lofty lifting – like the sun – of depression.
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A wretched start: There’s nothing new under the sun.
The women are fickle. The flowers bow to every wind.
The men are tyrants or servants or fools, and even
I might die – outrageously under the sun.

…Even the women will, and the flowers, and you.
These walls might crumble in time. We must return
into being dust or rain or woodland or thunder,
whatever our desires under the sun.

How dreadful. But this hour is mine, while it lasts,
enough to complete my poem among the flowers
rejoicing in my loves and our never recurring
lives as human beings under the sun.

Thomas Land

If you have any comments on this poem,  Thomas Land   would be pleased to hear from you.