WITH HIS BOOK, OF GARDENING
—Walafrid Strabo (d. 849)
Most learned Father Grimold,
your servant Strabo sends you his book,
a trivial gift and of no account, only for that,
seated in your own garden, where peach and apple
cast their ragged opacities
and your small pupils, laughing, gather up
the shining or furred fruit and bring it you
clutched to the stomach with both hands,
or put it away in bushels,
you might find some utility in it—more,
that you may prune it back,
strengthen, fertilize, transplant
as seems best to you. So may you at last
be brought to such flourishing
as grapples God's trellis toward
the evergreening of unwithering life:
this may Father, Son and Fruitful Spirit grant you.
(translated from the Latin by Tim Reynolds)
____________________
—Medusa
