Hardy’s Catalogues

Fleeing his clubs, dull honors, wives, the ageing Hardy hunches down in his potting-shed with his thumbtip-fumbled, fine- printed seed catalogue’s inflorescences— peripherally glimpsing the oxygenless blue line of the fleur-de-lys scaling his inner wrist; his chalky knuckles, his forearm’s crisp,lisse, pleated wrinkles; softly brown-spotted as a fox terrier’s belly. Yet this pleases, only this— age-speckled surfaces, sun-galls rose-speckled; puckering petals rugosely leaf-veined: the saturate, flooded stemlines’ mauves and verdures on the backlit catalogue’s tissuelike (nearly self-composting) pages—like his skin, all milliner-ribboned; yet with, barely hooded, things as they are and will be visible beneath it.