Fig tree

The trunk of an old fig tree in a friend's garden.

 

Fig Tree.

 

In winter, silvered branches lean

against the limewashed wall

of the timbered manor house.

The Tudor hall, box-hedged,

with cobbled path and herbal lawn,

rebuilt in city’s residential streets for preservation,

the latticed windows, and black-stained beams,

incongruous in present company,

the nearby modern factory producing ersatz sweets

for the modern taste.

 

The twigs are furred, soft, downy, like an infant’s head,

newborn, with large buds waiting for the year’s re-birth,

when this medieval garden puts forth

the simple flowers of the past: lovage, prima rosa,

fennel’s fragrant fronds, medicinal-seeded peony, heartsease.

The leaves break through like spreading hands,

with startling haste, light filtering between the fingers,

picking out the robust veins beneath.

Suddenly, the image of our shameful parentage makes sense:

they hid their nudity with foliate hands,

shielded their fig-fruit parts with coverings of green,

a sheath which did not fool their Lord.

 

Sex was not their offence, but pride,

independence and discernment, origins of first disease,

which let them see their nakedness and difference,

gave cause to hide within their Eden.

And yet they knew the Gardener would seek them out,

would recognise their self-inflicted state,

and know their dubious motivation,

their self-deluding insurrection.

Already sealed their fate: outcast, outlawed,

the garden guarded with a blazing sword.

Never-ending thirst for knowledge still a future burden,

they took only the constant hunger for perfection,

a tendency towards rebellious doubt,

and the fig.

 

Done