In H.D.’s “Garden,” the speaker addresses a rose that feels less like a soft flower than like something mineral and unbreakable—clear, cut in rock, hard as hail. There is a frustrated, almost violent wish to scrape its color away or break it, as if breaking that hardness would release some larger power. The speaker says that if they could stir or break the rose, they could break a tree, but the mood is one of being stuck.
The second half turns to the heavy heat. Fruit cannot drop because the air is too thick; pears and grapes are blunted and rounded by the pressure. The speaker cries out to the wind to cut the heat, tear it apart, and plow through it. The whole poem creates a tense, suffocating atmosphere and a longing for motion, sharpness, and relief.