Margaret Bradstock: Two Poems

Brief* Garden

Here I sit, in my lamplit bungalow, with the warm thick rain drumming

on the roof and leaking through the holes, with a glass of gin …

and from the boys’ quarters the tentative tooting of flutes.

Donald Friend, Diaries, May 13, 1958

We turn off from the Galle Road

to the Bawa Estate and its tropical house

enshrined as a gallery. Here a riot

of rainforest gardens, random fountains,

the famed satyr gateposts, usher you in.

Friend’s mural’s a paean to one-time Ceylon,

a jubilant mapping of palace and temples, of village

and street scenes, rickshaws and umbrellas,

monks with their begging-bowls.

Spotted deer roam freely, elephants, tusked

and bejewelled, jostle for pride of place.

Nude Krishna pipes music from a reed flute

as we stray into his paradise.

Then to the courtyard and clay wall tiles

incised with elephants and strutting peacocks

ancient hunters, chariots, and swan-necked ships.

Sculptures survive, and rough engravings

on concrete garden seats, of monkeys,

a boy sleeping, unmindful of watchers

one of the many boys.

After dark, it’s “Brief” at its best. Monsoon rains over,

an enormous full moon floods the garden with light

the night full of fireflies. But the climate’s now taking

its toll of the mural wall, floors cracked

and subsiding, the colours sinking from sight.

* The property, bequeathed to Bevis Bawa by his mother, was gained through a successful legal brief.

Margaret Bradstock