Sean Wayman: ‘The Greenhouse at Lednice Chateau’

The Greenhouse at Lednice Chateau

The greenhouse stands beside the buff chateau.
Though long and straight, at either end it’s rounded.
The plant life lends the glass an emerald glow,
which hints at paradise, distinctly bounded.

My interest caught by this antique intimation,
I start to hanker for the deepest truth.
Mysteries ripe for my investigation
exist beyond the greenhouse ticket booth.

A prayerful person might be moved to bow
on looking upwards at the arch of light.
I just can’t bring myself to disavow
the lustrous metaphors its tiles invite.

Inset between the ribbing of the vault,
they bathe the space with an auroral glow.
The angels couldn’t be as free of fault
to those who look up, hushed with awe, below.

Nevertheless, I start to roam about,
a new arrival in a foreign land.
And while there’s anxiousness in setting out
my first discoveries are close at hand.

What strange attachments I begin to form
along the pathway to the goldfish pond.
For if my hothoused…