A Vision of the Garden by James Merrill

A Vision of the Garden

One winter morning as a child

Upon the windowpane’s thin frost I drew

Forehead and eyes and mouth the clear and mild

Features of nobody I knew

 

And then abstracted looking through

This or that wet transparent line

Beyond beheld a winter garden so

Heavy with snow its hedge of pine

 

And sun so brilliant on the snow

I breathed my pleasure out onto the chill pane

Only to see its angel fade in mist.

I was a child, I did not know

 

That what I longed for would resist

Neither what cold lines should my finger trace

On colder grounds before I found anew

In yours the features of that face

 

Whose words whose looks alone undo

Such frosts I lay me down in love in fear

At how they melt become a blossoming pear

Joy outstretched in our bodies’ place.