Senlin, A Biography: Part 01: His Dark Origins - 05

In the hot noon, in an old and savage garden,     The peach-tree grows. Its cruel and ugly roots     Rend and rifle the silent earth for moisture.     Above, in the blue, hang warm and golden fruits.     Look, how the cancerous roots crack mould and stone!     Earth, if she had a voice, would wail her pain.     Is she the victim, or is the tree the victim?     Delicate blossoms opened in the rain,     Black bees flew among them in the sunlight,     And sacked them ruthlessly; and no a bird     Hangs, sharp-eyed, in the leaves, and pecks the fruit;     And the peach-tree dreams, and does not say a word.     . . . Senlin, tapping his trowel against a stone,     Observes this tree he planted: it is his own.     You will think it strange, says Senlin, but this tree     Utters profound things in this garden;     And in its silence speaks to me.     I have sensations, when I stand beneath it,     As if its leaves looked at me, and could see;     And those thin leaves, even in windless air,     Seem to be whispering me a choral music,     Insubstantial but debonair.     Regard, they seem to say,     Our idiot root, which going its brutal way     Has cracked your garden wall!     Ugly, is it not?     A desecration of this place . . .     And yet, without it, could we exist at all?     Thus, rustling with importance, they seem to me     To make their apology;     Yet, while they apologize,     Ask me a wary question with their eyes.     Yes, it is true their origin is low,     Brutish and dull and cruel . . . and it is true     Their roots have cracked the wall. But do we know     The leaves less cruel, the root less beautiful?     Sometimes it seems as if there grew     In the dull garden of my mind     A tree like this, which, singing with delicate leaves,     Yet cracks the wall with cruel roots and blind.     Sometimes, indeed, it appears to me     That I myself am such a tree . . .     . . . And as we hear from Senlin these strange words     So, slowly, in the sunlight, he becomes this tree:     And among the pleasant leaves hang sharp-eyed birds     While cruel roots dig downward secretly.