An ode for Paula Dobriansky, John Baird, and all the other nihilists in Bali who press on toward a “triumph where all things falter.”
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A Forsaken Garden
Algernon Charles Swinburne
In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.