The Garden

Recently in class we read the poem, ‘The Garden” by Ezra Pound. I didn’t understand it really. I wasn’t in the mood to, but since we were doing our ‘Lectio Divina” the knowledge was forced upon me!! Not really, but it did help me understand it on a level I didn’t even know existed.

I found the poem, after reviewing a couple times, solitary and lonely.

And she is dying of piecemeal…

In her is the end of breeding…

Boredom is exquisite…

Reading over it again forces me to focus on the positive in life. Loneliness is something that every human goes through at one point. But I don’t think it’s healthy for one to constantly be in a lonely state. I believe people need people. In an odd way, this poem spoke to me in that way. Through taking the reader through this lonely lifestyle, it showed the importance of people needing fellowship, friends, and companions. I believe this fact is something that people have forgotten in today’s society. Depression and suicide have inclined by 600% since 1960. That’s a HUGE number. I believe we as a people have loss the meaning of community, no one even smile at one another any more. People are too afraid to be nice to one another or show compassion to a stranger. How did we get this way?

She would like some one to speak to her,

And is almost afraid that I will commit

That indiscretion.

The excerpt above reminds me of living on this campus. To go further, I and my friends were eating dinner together in the campus restaurant. One of my friends realized that someone they knew was eating alone. She wondered whether she should go ask him to eat with us. She eventually did. When she left, my other friend mentioned how she hated when she ate alone and when people invite her to eat with them. This made me wonder how I would react to the same situation. I am a very sociable person; I like to talk with people so I don’t like eating by myself often. But at the same time, I am almost afraid for someone to come up and ask me. So as you can see, the last stanza of this poem hit me like a ton of bricks, I was reading about myself. Thus, this poem made me realize something about myself I didn’t realize, that I sometimes push people away, not even meaning to.