It was a disappointment,
For I do not like magenta,
And the garden was a fire of magenta
Exploding like a bomb into the light-colored peace of a spring afternoon.
Not wistaria dropping through Spanish moss,
Not cherokees sprinkling the tops of trees with moon-shaped stars,
Not the little pricked-out blooms of banksia roses,
Could quench the flare of raw magenta.
Rubens women shaking the fatness of their bodies
In an opulent egotism
Till the curves and colors of flesh
Are nauseous to the sight,
So this magenta.
Hateful.
Reeking with sensuality,
Bestial, obscene—
I remember you as something to be forgotten.
But I cherish the smooth sweep of the colorless river,
And the thin, clear song of the red-winged blackbirds
In the marsh-grasses on the opposite bank.
Amy Lowell (1874–1925) was born in Boston in 1874, and turned to poetry in 1902, becoming a major figure in the early twentieth-century’s imagist movement. “Magnolia Gardens” was published in the December 1922 issue of Poetry (vol. XXI no. III).