The Garden That
Followed Me Home

I placed the glass upon the table
Where the afternoon lay still
Inside, the seed turned without moving
With a small and private will

No soil clung around its body
No shell divided dark from light
Yet every time I looked away
It travelled closer through my sight

The clock forgot a single second
The curtains leaned against the room
And somewhere underneath the silence
Something practised how to bloom

I never broke the glass
I never touched the seam
I only brought it through the doorway
From the outskirts of a dream

Something unopened
Opened in me
A root without a beginning
A branch without a tree

Something unspoken
Called through the floor
And every wall inside the house
Remembered being a door

At midnight all the spoons were trembling
In their drawer beneath the sink
The water tasted faintly silver
And the shadows learned to drink

A little road appeared in circles
On the surface of the glass
Tiny lanterns moved beneath it
Carrying faces as they passed

I saw the houses made of sleeping
I saw the river climb the rain
I saw a window turn towards me
And silently pronounce my name

Something unopened
Opened in me
A root without a beginning
A branch without a tree

Something unspoken
Called through the floor
And every wall inside the house
Remembered being a door

I buried it beneath a pillow
I locked it underneath the stair
I threw it from the bedroom window

In the morning
It was there

Not in the glass
Not on the floor
Not in the garden
Not anymore

It beat behind my ribs
Once

Then twice

Then every room replied

Something unopened
Opened its eye

The ceiling filled with evening
The river crossed the sky

Something unfinished
Entered the stone

I thought I had carried the seed into the house

The seed had carried me home

Scratch in the timber
Knock in the wall
Something is counting
Each footstep in the hall

Three in the morning
Four at the door
Five wooden fingers
Press under the floor

I lifted one board
The darkness breathed
A pale root twisted
Like something sleeved

It wore tiny windows
Along every side
With yellow-lit figures
Still walking inside

I hammered it down
The hammer grew leaves
The nail whispered softly
What no one believes

Roots beneath the floorboards
Roots beneath the bed
Roots around the photographs
Roots inside my head

Cut them at the doorway
Burn them at the wall
Every piece becomes a path
Every path becomes them all

They entered the cupboards
They climbed through the chairs
They tied little bridges
Between all the stairs

They drank from the plumbing
They rang through the phone
A voice in the receiver said
You are not alone

I pulled at the longest
It pulled me instead
Straight through the kitchen
And under the bed

There in the earth
Where the foundations should be
A moon floated downward
On a black silver sea

Roots beneath the floorboards
Roots beneath the bed
Roots around the photographs
Roots inside my head

Cut them at the doorway
Burn them at the wall
Every piece becomes a path
Every path becomes them all

Whose house?

Our house.

Whose ground?

No ground.

Whose voice?

Your voice.

Whose dream?

Turn around.

The floorboards rose slowly
Like lids from an eye
The furniture tilted
The lamps filled with sky

The walls moved apart
Without making a sound
And streets from the village
Came turning around

A bell without a tower
Rang once in the room
The root reached my heartbeat
And taught it to bloom

Roots beneath the floorboards
Roots beneath the skin
There was never any outside
There was only further in

Roots beneath the floorboards
Breaking through the stone
The garden has no borders now

The garden has come home

The wallpaper opened at half past two
Blue paper roses pushing through
A painted bird escaped its frame
Circled the lamp and spoke my name

The carpet rolled into a hill
The mantel clock grew roots and stood still
Tea in the cups became summer rain
Then climbed to the ceiling and fell again

Room by room
Leaf by leaf
The house unfolds
What I brought underneath

Door by door
Hour by hour
Everything hidden
Is learning to flower

The bed became a field of white
Where pillows floated out of sight
The wardrobe opened onto spring
Full of coats that began to sing

One wore the shape I had as a child
One wore branches tangled and wild
One had no sleeves, no back, no face
Only a window filled with space

I tried to sleep
The mattress stirred
And underneath me
The village turned

Apples rolled against the grain
Each one holding a room in rain
The oven glowed with a violet sun
The plates began revolving as one

Knives pointed north
Then east
Then down

The table stretched
Beyond the town

A river poured from the kitchen tap
And carried away the edge of the map

Room by room
Leaf by leaf
The house unfolds
What I brought underneath

Door by door
Hour by hour
Everything hidden
Is learning to flower

The hallway lengthened into years
Past unfamiliar souvenirs
Portraits watched from lives unmade
Growing younger as the daylight faded

At the end stood the yellow door
I had seen in a house before
Behind it waited an empty chair
In the garden that wasn’t there

Then every room began at once
To shed its walls and show its roots
The ceiling broke in colored rings
The staircase opened into wings

The bedroom bloomed
The kitchen shone
The parlour spoke
In a voice I owned

The windows bent towards the floor
The roots rose up through every door
And from the centre of the house
A thousand sleeping gardens flowered out

Room by room
Name by name
The house remembers
Why I came

Door by door
Hour by hour
The dream has found
Its final flower

Room by room
The walls are gone

The garden enters
And the house moves on

Enstrümantal.

Why do you close the curtains
When the windows face within?

Why do you lock the doorway
When the doorway is your skin?

Why do you call it silence
When the buried bells reply?

Why do you search beneath the house
For the village behind your eyes?

Because I saw the streets returning
Every time I tried to sleep
Because I heard the wooden houses
Turning somewhere in the deep

Because the lanterns crossed my vision
Though the room was full of day
Because the faces in the river
Knew the things I could not say

Behind my eyes
The bridges turn

Behind my eyes
The lanterns burn

Behind my eyes
The windows rise

The village lives
Behind my eyes

I blink and see the market square
With empty stalls of breathing air
A woman made of candle smoke
Sells every promise never spoken

A child with branches in his hair
Points towards a vacant chair
He says that someone waits for me
Inside the oldest memory

But when I ask him who is there
He opens like a folding stair
And every step descends inside
The village I believed had died

Behind my eyes
The river bends

Behind my eyes
The road extends

Behind my eyes
The sleeper lies

The village lives
Behind my eyes

I close my left eye
Morning disappears

I close my right eye
The village draws near

I close them both
The houses ignite

A thousand windows
Opening white

Each window holds a different me
Each one wakes eventually
One remained beyond the gate
One came home and learned too late

One became the path below
One became the seed to grow
One looks outward through my face
And waits to take my waking place

Who dreamed the garden?

The ground dreamed green.

Who dreamed the village?

The garden dreamed.

Who dreamed the traveller?

The road inside.

Who carried them home?

The one who opened his eyes.

Behind my eyes
No morning stays

Behind my eyes
Are branching ways

Behind my eyes
The old world dies

The village turns
The river climbs

Behind my eyes
The rooms take root

Behind my eyes
The branches shoot

Behind my eyes
No inside hides

The village lives

The village lives

The village looks
Through both my eyes

I ran through the front door
The front door led in
I climbed through the window
And entered my skin

I broke through the garden wall
Straight into the hall
I followed the road from the village
And came back beneath it all

No outside left
No place to go
The sky is in the cellar
And the roots are in the road

No outside left
No world apart
The river crossed the ceiling
And the gate is in my heart

I shouted to the neighbours
Their houses turned to stare
Each window held a lantern
Each lantern held a stair

The street curled like a finger
The rooftops bent below
Every road became the pathway
That opened long ago

No outside left
No place to hide
The moon is in the water
And the water is inside

No outside left
No final wall
The garden dreamed the village
Now the village dreams us all

Break the glass
Find the seed

Break the seed
Find the street

Break the street
Find the door

Break the door
Find one more

Break the name
Find the sound

Break the sky
Find the ground

Break the ground
Find the same

Everything returns again

The day peeled from the heavens
The hours came unwound
The sun became a window
Looking upward from the ground

Every person in the street
Had roots instead of feet
And every mouth began to sing
The name beneath my name

No outside left
No place to go
The house is in the garden
And the garden is the road

No outside left
No final door
The dream has reached the waking world

And waking is no more

No outside left
No separate whole

The village is beneath the skin

The garden is the soul

There was a path that wasn’t there
A gate without a wall
A seed asleep inside the glass

Now there is no glass at all

It opened silently at sunrise
A crack ran through the day
Light rose upward from the table
And carried the roof away

Roots moved underneath the pavement
Lanterns burned beneath the stone
Every house began to breathe

The garden had followed me home

The ground remembers
The colors call
The breathing trees
Have crossed the wall

The garden that followed me home
Is breaking the sky from the stone
Every window is open
Every boundary gone

The garden that followed me home
Has entered the blood and the bone
The house becomes the pathway

And the pathway carries us on

The village rose beneath the city
Its river crossed the street
The houses made of sleep awakened
And gathered at our feet

The moon beneath the water surfaced
The nameless found their names
A thousand doors swung open

And nothing stayed the same

Turn the bridge
Wake the stream
Raise the road
Release the dream

Open the window
Open the stone
Open the world

And carry it home

Who brought the seed home?

I did.

Who opened the seed?

No one.

What grew from the seed?

Everything.

Where does the garden end?

It doesn’t.

The garden that followed me home
Has swallowed the distance between us
The lanterns are burning
The river has flown

The garden that followed me home
Was waiting beneath every stone
It was never a place

It was everything living
Remembering its own

The garden dreamed the village
The village dreamed the sky
The sky dreamed every living thing

And opened every eye

No more borders
No more alone
No more searching
For the road home

The house becomes the village
The village becomes the sun
The garden becomes the waking world

And all of us become one

The garden came
The garden came
The garden came

And nothing stayed outside again