Love Lies Bleeding Poem by gershon hepner

Love lies bleeding
over the garden wall
sadly seeding
flowers without recall.

Falling faster
than love that bleeds to death,
wood and plaster
stagger out of breath.

Over walls
the flowers bleed like love,
while fallen halls
observe them from above.

As man restores
the halls, the flowers' bloom
that bleeds ignores
the silent buildings' doom.


Inspired during a visit to Heritage Square Museum where the guide, Richard Hilton, not only conducted us to the Longfellow-Hastings Octagon House but pointed out that the flowers in a garden outside the house were called love-lies-bleeding and over-the-garden-wall.

7/25/98