"Two Trees" by Don Paterson

Two Trees

One morning, Don Miguel got out of bed

with one idea rooted in his head:

to graft his orange to his lemon tree.

It took him the whole day to work them free,

lay open their sides, and lash them tight.

For twelve months, from the shame or from the fright

they put forth nothing; but one day there appeared

two lights in the dark leaves. Over the years

the limbs would get themselves so tangled up

each bough looked like it gave a double crop,

and not one kid in the village didn’t know

the magic tree in Miguel’s patio.

The man who bought the house had had no dream

so who can say what dark malicious whim

led him to take his axe and split the bole

along its fused seam, then dig two holes.

And no, they did not die from solitude;

nor did their branches bear a sterile fruit;

nor did their unhealed flanks weep every spring

for those four yards that lost them everything,

as each strained on its shackled roots to face

the other’s empty, intricate embrace.

They were trees, and trees don’t weep or ache or shout.

And trees are all this poem is about.

Source of the text – Don Paterson, Rain: Poems.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, p. 3.

TJB: Two couplet-stanzas personify arranged marriage & forced divorce—like Frost but with a punchline; like Marvell but with a real estate sale.