Dead flowers in the garden – then and now

In the spring of 1989, I had the good fortune to attend a one-day conference with Robert Bly in Austin, Texas. The event was filmed by journalist Bill Moyers for his 1990 documentary, A Gathering of Men.

Robert Bly was not well-known among the general public at the time I saw him, but was highly regarded within the ranks of what was then being called the men’s movement. A little more than a year later, he would burst into the mainstream American consciousness with the broadcast of A Gathering of Men and the publication of his most popular book, Iron John: A Book About Men.

The timing of my attendance at the 1989 conference was auspicious, to say the least. I’d been working actively on family of origin and childhood issues for a couple of years, with a particular focus on my relationship with my father. I’d recently walked away from a job that was making me crazy and killing my spirit, and in the aftermath had found myself quite suddenly, spontaneously, and unexpectedly producing a series of poems that I’d entitled Iron Man Family Outing after a phrase that had come to me in one of my very first Iron Man dreams. So I was already deep into one of the most significant psychospiritual and emotional openings in my life when I saw Robert Bly speak that day.

I had virtually no familiarity with Robert Bly or his work prior to the event. He spent a good deal of time that day working his way through the story of Iron John, material which, for whatever reason, has never resonated much with me (then or now). I did, however, find it surprising and rather odd to discover that someone else was exploring another, completely different “iron man” mythology at the same time I was independently so immersed in exploring my own.

But what really moved me that day, and left an imprint on my psyche that has remained ever since, was Bly’s reading of his translation of the following poem by Spanish poet Antonio Machado (this version is transcribed from A Gathering of Men; Bly’s original translation can be found in Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado):

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

And the wind said:
“In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.”

I said:
“I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.”

And the wind said:
“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves.”

And the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

I was devastated by what I heard. I felt as if my heart had been sliced wide open. “I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead.” No one had ever reflected the state of my inner world back to me in such a profound and specific way. I can see it in my face when the camera shows me in the audience at the conclusion of the poem. I was changed forever.

Since that day, I’ve often been reminded, and haunted, by the question that ends the poem: “What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?” And I still feel, so much of the time, disappointed, discouraged, and devastated in response. But although much of the emotional energy is similar to what I felt when I first heard the poem in 1989, the context now, twenty years later, is very different.

In 1989, at age 31 (and feeling so much older than my years), my response to the poem, and to the question it posed, was to commit myself to living nothing short of a totally authentic life. I was inspired and energized. And I believed it was possible to do it, to live my life in such a way that I’d never again feel so empty and so riddled with feelings of regret, despair, and self-betrayal in response to that simple question: “What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

Now, as a 51-year-old man with twenty more years of wasted time, lost opportunities, failures in life and love, and a chain of compromises for the sake of survival that stretches into the past and future as far as my mind can see, I sit here with a broken right wrist and shoulder, unable to work or even drive, struggling to type with my left hand, and I wonder: Is it still possible for me to live an authentic life? Is it even reasonable to hope for that anymore?

And yet … I cannot help but try.

The Dead flowers in the garden – then and now by Rick Belden, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.