Kafka’s Garden

January 31. Gardening, hopelessness of the future.

—Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks

                The latticing for the string beans will strive towards some sort of heaven, for in every physical being, there exists the imaginings of some spiritual equivalent.  If the beautiful, if the Good does not take root in this life, then it sprouts in the life that plants itself directly perpendicular to this one.  The latticing for the string beans will serve as some sort of ladder, if not for Jacob, then the small insects that know no where else to go.

                It is not so much the gardening that surprises, but rather the gardening in the dead of an already dead European winter that surprises.  What I see that F.B. cannot, although she is in perpetual leave, is the frost-formed dew, the minute icicles that cling with blue fingernails to the stiff leaves.  What F.B. cannot see that I can is how, weeping, I too cling to something long since dead. 

                Instead of the Tree of Life, a silver ash and the poor wren that hobbles there.  What of the frozen fruit?  If anything is tempting, it is not this, not this garden of grasses that shatters underfoot.  Perhaps it is not so much the promise of paradise but rather the promise of not paradise that makes me want to uproot radishes, smash the just buried spring bulbs.  A thousand different specimens of lichen have hatched, are roosting upon the stone by the icy gourds.  In the mornings, what I see that F.B. does not: a myriad of red chicks, a splattering rainbow of sitting eggs. 

                Dreams again of carrots and the red devil claws of rhubarb stalks.  Evil must, I know, also have its roots in the garden.  I have witnessed the splaying of petals, the curving mounds of earth when new life shies before breaking through.  Dreams again of F.B., her white handkerchief fluttering by the frozen fountain, and a snow veiling her visage from me.  Evil, I know, must live underground like the badger, the mole, and other animals that take, one by one, those beings I love.  Dream of F.B., her frozen mouth, her frozen heart. 

                It is not the planting that keeps me alive, but fear of breaking through the winter ground.  How odd that nature too must develop a thick skin in order to survive the cold.  Yesterday, a few rocks unearthed and a few potatoes to replace them.  Today, a boulder threatens to keep me mad: my shovel impaired, my ungloved hands worked raw.  It is not the unearthing that keeps me alive, but rather everything that gets substituted, the promise that for every subtraction something living will take its place.

                The seed casings remind me of the perplexity of life, how it exists within another perceived life.  Come spring the string beans will, because of my latticing, climb towards infinity; I, possessing the idea of Knowledge, will try through my studies to reach heaven in similar fashion.  The perplexity of this life, existing within another life: Hamlet’s nutshell and the almond, not eaten, but to be planted to become a tree.  What F.B. cannot see that I see: no matter her leavings, we will be united again whether in this life or the next.  What I see that F.B. cannot see: the ice-covered moss, the rhododendron’s hidden fire, the pond iris all ashiver.

Jenny Boully is the author of [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2006) and The Body: An Essay (Slope Editions, 2002).  Her third book, The Book of Beginnings & Endings is forthcoming from Sarabande.  She is a Ph.D. Candidate in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  More can be found at jennyboully.blogspot.com.

Editors’ Note: Along with the poet, we thank the publication Unsaid, in which “Kafka’s Garden” was first published.