Robin Hood's Barn 



their vespers. Their quiet service, as lay-sister, 

 I am privileged to share, but your presence, I 

 assure you, will be taken as an act of sacrilege. 



Nor need you imagine that you may take 

 delight in the garden which lures you from the 

 road by its bright wave of color. Not for human 

 eyes are its inducements offered. Each fir tree 

 and spruce which you regard for shape and shade 

 or for fine subtleties of texture, my mother 

 judges for the practicable thickness of its walls 

 for nests and by the stoutness of its scaffolding. 

 The gooseberry or cherry which you would plump 

 so carelessly into your mouth with pleasure in 

 its spurt of coolness, is meant to be pouched whole 

 by chipmunk or pecked by robin to a juicy froth. 

 Should you idly beg a spray of columbine, you 

 will be made to understand that its deep cups 

 are serviceable beakers set to assuage the thirst 

 of a long bill or of a cvu-ved proboscis. Indeed, 

 the privet hedge I think serves less with its green 

 shield from curious eyes than with its public pegs 

 on which fat yellow spiders may stretch taut their 

 silver clothes-lines, Down this path and down 

 [268] 



