by
Poet's Day

And In My Hand a Forest

And In My Hand a Forest
by
Poet's Day

This week’s choice, chosen in haste but nonetheless with reverence is “The Seed-Shop” by Muriel Stuart.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap;
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

Poem 397. The Seed-Shop

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry –
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

Dead that shall quicken at the voice of spring,
Sleepers to wake beneath June’s tempest kiss;
Though birds pass over, unremembering,
And no bee find here roses that were his.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams;
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
That will drink deeply of a century’s streams;
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap;
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

In this poem Muriel Stuart shows us beautifully the contrast between dried seeds and the wonders that may spring from them in time.

The first stanza shows us the shop—I imagine an old-school setup with solid counters and shelves and the scent of old herbs and flowers in the air—and we see the seeds in their faded paper packets, perhaps sitting in wooden trays, dormant but pregnant with purpose: even when poured through the hands, the prospect of their future abundance hovers like a dream though they seem lifeless, like shards of stone, grains of sand, or the cinders of long-dead fires.

Although they may seem dead, they are sleeping, and in the hot and humid days of June, they will awaken, though in their present state no bird will glance at them twice and the insects will find none of the pollen they seek.

The least promising speck may hoard a whole valley filled with hawthorn; the dryest nut may harbour a huge cedar that might live an hundred years or more, and growths of lilies may easily outlive the one who scattered the dusty seeds from the shop.

The last stanza likens the quiescent nature of the seeds to the sleep of death, suggesting that just as millions of roses will spring from these doubtful antecedents, we may return to life: a reincarnation rather than a resurrection. In the seed-shop, we can blow the blossom of the garden hither and thither with our breath just as the wind will do in time, and in our fists we can hold an entire forest.

Muriel Stuart shows us how the brightest of blooms, the tallest of trees, and the most aromatic plants all stem from their tiny antecedents regardless of how dry, unappetising or discouraging they might seem, just as we all may transcend our beginnings.

I like this because Stuart evokes the idea of an old shop full of dormant seeds so well and because she then brings these seeds to life and shows us that they are full of promise. There is a good performance of the poem on the Beyond Pesticides channel on YouTube.