Gardening in February 2

My limbs which gardened yesterday
Are partly jelly, partly aching,
Warm and slightly stiff from all the raking
Of the fresh dug earth.
My palms are leathery as the peonies
Dried ones, or the hellebores.  I will not play
My violin now, I could not even hold my bow,
I've been bitten by the coming of the spring,
And must labour in this simple way:
Cutting through the clumps of golden rod,
The subterranean redness in its shoots,
And pale etiolation of its roots,
Being many, make the soil friable,
Crumbling as I lift each new cut clod;
I'm attempting their obliteration.
And I think that gardening 's always liable
To make me turn to murder,
Create some new massacre,
Eliminate a whole race of flowers,
Whose only crime has been their act of reproduction,
Most efficient in the peaceful summer hours.