From the second read on, however, as the reader re-translates the work, we know that the “garden” in the first line is more than just a wistful statement, but a more active contrast from the external source. More than letting them grow wild, would the poet perhaps plant them intentionally? A thistle provides a beautiful purple blossom, and Datura white trumpets of its own; why not? Arctic foxes, by virtue of their diet, wind up planting gardens above their dens, scanty cold-weather flowers peeking through after winter.
Even reading the poem top to bottom on repeat, one picks up subsequent layers one after another. Is the poet wishing for solitude? There is this rejection of external requests for someone’s imagined benefit and talk of hedging (perhaps literally) oneself in “with no need for reproof”. Is the poet musing on death when confronted with vegicide? An “earthen roof” has plain enough meaning.
Weinberger continues his sentiment: “the poem continues in a state of restless change.” By virtue of the reader’s ever-shifting state of mind, they constantly re-translate otherwise static text, even from minute to minute, and build up a library of meaning from a single work.
+