The Gardener’s Marginalia

[Intro]
[Verse]
The greenhouse glass is silver lace
I watch the winter find its place
My fingers stained with garden loam
Within this crystal, frozen dome
The cor anglais begins to sigh
Beneath a heavy, velvet sky
[Pre-Chorus]
I climbed the servant’s narrow stair
With static logic and a prayer
The corridors are dim and long
A ghost of some forgotten song
[Chorus]
A pressed violet in your book
Where you will never even look
Across the ballroom’s gilded light
I’ll be a shadow in the night
A secret kept in G minor
No love could be any finer
[Post-Chorus]
Oh, the winter bloom
In your silent room
Just a tiny trace
Of a hidden grace
[Verse]
Your chapbook lies upon the felt
Where candles flicker, slowly melt
I found the page you never read
Where all the silent things are said
I tucked the petals in the spine
A small rebellion, purely mine
[Pre-Chorus]
The lute arpeggios are thin
Like paper or like porcelain
The timpani beats like a heart
That’s destined to be torn apart
[Chorus]
A pressed violet in your book
Where you will never even look
Across the ballroom’s gilded light
I’ll be a shadow in the night
A secret kept in G minor
No love could be any finer
[Bridge]
White wax on the sheet music falls
Echoing through the marble halls
The viola da gamba plays
Of ancient, half-forgotten days
We dance within a different sphere
You are there and I am here
[Verse]
The masquerade begins at eight
I’ll watch you pass the iron gate
In silk and pearls and powdered hair
While I breathe in the freezing air
I’m just an assistant to the trees
While you are lost in royal ease
[Verse]
You’ll dance with dukes and foreign kings
While I arrange the floral things
The frost will bloom upon the pane
Until the sun returns again
But in that book of poetry
Is all the truth of you and me
I wonder if you’ll turn the page
Or leave me in this golden cage
[Chorus]
A pressed violet in your book
Where you will never even look
Across the ballroom’s gilded light
I’ll be a shadow in the night
A secret kept in G minor
No love could be any finer
[Post-Chorus]
Oh, the winter bloom
In your silent room
Just a tiny trace
Of a hidden grace
[Outro]