Barbara Hepworth's Garden

Down in the garden where she walked and worked,
moving along a maze of paths,
you'd turn between the palms,
surprised by shapes of stone
her hands had fashioned, as by wind or water.

Tall and single, with a needle's eye,
or twisted in a magic double helix,
or like the hollowed egg
of some great bird nested in roses.

One, like a window
framed the granite church.
Another, scooped like a boulder
tossed in a mountain stream,
tempted a young girl to climb inside,
an embryo in the womb,
perfectly fitted to its mother
— no–one to say her nay.

Back in the house we saw what could not bear
the weather in the garden.
Marble, wood, perfectly finished,
smooth and brown as eggs,
or sea–shells, strung the way some conch
might be for Orpheus to play,
leaving behind Aeolian music in your mind.