The Gardener

I passed him bending over saplings
whose necks the violent gale had made to bow,

And he lifts them up above the earth,
as though delivering them from the abasement of prostration.

I watched him pass his two palms
over the saplings, from stem to stem,

Stripping a slip from every branch
and burying it, that it might be born anew—

His hands upon the soil, and his eyes
fastened on the far horizon...