The Good Gardener (On How He Fell)

Here sits a once good gardener, pale as a shadow of a doubt
Once a happy dweller of a garden good, once a sleepy sinner
Once cast out
To the sea where the crossy-eyed maids murmur low, "do you see, do you see
Where the doubts cross his shadow?"
Drowned and amoral, I pollinate the coral and reek of the deep
Where I've tended the water weed -
I was once your good gardener, sing to bring on Spring
I know where your good grass grows
I know what your boyfriend knows
I was your good gardener

I saw twilight car waxers, corpulent dog walkers, clean canny couples on the sunset strip
From a tower forty miles to the east of Augusta saw a plague on the Indian
A'coming on a windship
You were in the garden when the wind swept up and took the foul words from your mouth
Now you know what your sarcasm really really means
It's the tearing with your teeth of the flesh from the bones of your brother -

Kill the shrub to fertilise the flower
Did I hear you saying that the form doesn't matter?
Well form into matter, the matter is forever, but only in a good garden

Black Rock bound in the Brighton bowl where the seas of desolation roll
Where you're borne and borne and borne in again to the pebble-feather shore of forgotten friends
Think how you can't see the science without seeing first the self
But then nobody thinks of growing somebody else
And how the sun, hungry sun, holds the withered withered world
So why shouldn't I kiss the beautiful girl?

When I was her good gardener
Sing of the Summer sham
O see them grow tall, see them in their rot, see them go to seed in the cemetery plot
I was your good gardener

Sing to bring on Spring
O ice of Winter would crackle and splinter with my love in everything
Ice of Winter would crackle and splinter with my love in everything
I was your good gardener...

The sea is stark and lovely, and it scares me to the point of rapture
I was your good gardener, of some good stature
The sea is stark and lovely, and it scares me to the point of rapture
I was your good gardener, now I - can barely - look at ya