Free Collected Earlier Poems by Anthony Hecht

music to the woods.
        There is no garden to the practiced gaze
    Half so erotic: here the sixteenth century thew
    Rose to its last perfection, this being chiefly due
        To the provocative role the water plays.
                   Tumble and jump, the fountains’ moods
                             Teach the world how.
                             But, ah, who ever saw
                   Finer proportion kept. The sum
        Of intersecting limbs was something planned.
    Ligorio, the laurel! Every turn and quirk
    Weaves in this waving green and liquid world to work
        Its formula, binding upon the gland,
                   Even as molecules succumb
                             To Avogadro’s law.
                             The intricate mesh of trees,
                   Sagging beneath a lavender snow
        Of wisteria, wired by creepers, perfectly knit
    A plot to capture alive the migrant, tourist soul
    In its corporeal home with all the deft control
        And artifice of an Hephaestus’ net.
                   Sunlight and branch rejoice to show
                             Sudden interstices.
                             The whole garden inclines
                   The flesh as water falls, to seek
        For depth. Consider the top balustrade,
    Where twinned stone harpies, with domed and virgin breasts,
    Spurt from their nipples that no pulse or hand has pressed
        Clear liquid arcs of benefice and aid
                   To the chief purpose. They are Greek
                             Versions of valentines
                             And spend themselves to fill
                   The celebrated flumes that skirt
        The horseshoe stairs. Triumphant then to a sluice,
    With Brownian movement down the giggling water drops
    Past haunches, over ledges, out of mouths, and stops
        In a still pool, but, by a plumber’s ruse,
                   Rises again to laugh and squirt
                             At heaven, and is still
                             Busy descending. White
                   Ejaculations leap to teach
        How fertile are these nozzles; the streams run
    Góngora through the garden, channel themselves, and pass
    To lily-padded ease, where insubordinate lass
        And lad can cool their better parts, where sun
                   Heats them again to furnace pitch
                             To prove his law is light.
                             Marble the fish that puke
                   Eternally, marble the lips
        Of gushing naiads, pleased to ridicule
    Adonis, marble himself, and larger than life-sized,
    Untouched by Venus, posthumously circumcised
        Patron of Purity; and any fool
                   Who feels no flooding at the hips
                             These spendthrift stones rebuke.
                             It was in such a place
                   That Mozart’s Figaro contrived
        The totally expected. This is none
    Of your French topiary, geometric works,
    Based on God’s rational, wrist-watch universe; here lurks
        The wood louse, the night crawler, the homespun
                   Spider; here are they born and wived
                             And bedded, by God’s grace.
                             Actually, it is real
                   The way the world is real: the horse
        Must turn against the wind, and the deer feed
    Against the wind, and finally the