Edens

 Like God, I get up early, walk out in the cool of the day
to see my handiwork. Oh, Nathaniel, thou hast not done well!
I'll post a sign: Henry Thoreau, poet and pencil-maker,
who planted this garden as a wedding gift for Nathaniel
Hawthorne and his bride, does by this notice publicly
      foreswear

responsibility for its present deplorable state.
Pigweed in the parsnips, the radishes choked with grass—alas,
my friend, how you have lapsed! "Paradise" you call it, say
      you live
here like Adam and Eve. Husbandry! The garden must
      give place
to the bedchamber this marriage month! The window of
      that shrine