Today, I have a tragic story for you, dear reader. A story which doesn’t put me in the most flattering of lights.
I accidentally tortured, mutilated, and killed many potted plants.
Now, don’t shudder and please don’t stop reading, measure your outrage! I work very hard today to make amends for my terrible deeds. The vegetable kingdom doesn’t have to fear me anymore. I am kind, respectful and considerate towards each plant I meet, always keeping in mind a particular conscience of their motor difficulties.
Alas, how many innocent plants had to die before I understood them! I was absolutely unconscious of the horrors I committed against them, until the day where, one night, I got up to drink a glass of water in my kitchen, and heard Basil the fifth (my basil tree) sing this daunting lament:
The lament of Basil the basil tree
How sorrowful am I, prisoner of my pot?
While she keeps me alive and pretends to love me,
She puts me in the sun when the weather is hot
Waters me, fondles me, calls me honey-dearie
And she says she adores the sweet smell of my leaf
She tears it savagely, crushes it in her hand.
How can she be so cruel, is beyond my belief
When I am so helpless, I can only just stand!
She says to me:
“Basil, my basil tree,
I will take care of thee
In return please give me
One or two leaves, Basil,
So my dishes can be
Delicious and tasty.”
One or two leaves, she says !! She pulls handfuls of them.
If she goes on like that, there’ll be just a trunk left
I’ll turn into a stalk, a lost and lonely stem
My rotten roots dying inside the window box.
I’d rather grow alone, on a road full of rocks
Depending on the rain, praying for each droplet
Than being tortured by the hand which waters me
She’s been my only friend, my only enemy.
She says to me:
“Basil, my basil tree,
I will take care of thee
In return please give me
One or two leaves, Basil,
So my dishes can be
Delicious and tasty.”
My days are now numbered, my withered leaves are cursed
If I am weeping so, it is not on my fate
But on the certainty of not being the first
Nor the last one indeed that she will mutilate
I’ve heard her say today to a trembling mint plant
While she was devouring my limbs finely minced:
“Basil 2, 3 and 4 were far more resistant
As soon as tomorrow, I’ll have to buy the sixth.”