Praises

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Praises



The vegetables please us with their modes and virtues.
                                                                                 The demure heart
Of the lettuce inside its circular court, baroque ear
Of quiet under its rustling house of lace, pleases
Us.
       And the bold strength of the celery, its green Hispanic
!Shout! its exclamatory confetti.

                                                      And the analogue that is Onion:
Ptolemaic astronomy and tearful allegory, the Platonic circles
Of His inexhaustible soul!
                                           O and the straightforwardness
In the labyrinth of Cabbage, the infallible rectitude of Homegrown Mushroom
Under its cone of silence like a papal hat -
                                                                       All these
Please us.

                  And the syllabus of the corn,
                                                                  that wampum,
                                                                                            its golden
Roads leading out of the wigwams of its silky and youthful smoke;
The nobility of the dill, cool in its silences and cathedrals;
Tomatoes five-alarm fires in their musky barrios, peas
Asleep in their cartridge clips
                                                  beetsblood,
                                                                      colonies of the imperial
Cauliflower, and the buddha-like seeds of the pepper
Turning their prayerwheels in the green gloom of their caves.
All these we praise: they please us all ways: these smallest virtues.
All these earth-given;
                                    and the heaven-hung fruit also...

                                                                                          As instance
Banana which continually makes angelic ears out of sour
Purses, or the winy abacus of the holy grape on its cross
Of alcohol, or the peach with its fur like a youg girl's -
All these we praise: the winter in the flesh of the apple, and the sun
Domesticated under the orange's rind.

                                                                       We praise
By the skin of our teeth, Persimmon, and Pawpaw's constant
Affair with gravity, and the proletariat of the pomegranate
Inside its leathery city.

                                      And let us praise all these
As they please us: skin, flesh, flower, and the flowering
Bones of their seeds: from which come orchards: bees: honey:
Flowers, love's language, love, heart's ease, poems, praise.



Thomas McGrath
 
 
I can't help but think of Pablo Neruda. Who else would praise a vegetable so? Well McGrath has taken a stab at it. The thought of a lettuce as a circular court, a house of rustling lace, it does please me. Celery like an exclamation, an onion with its Platonic circles, the labyrinth of cabbage – it doesn't even take a poet to recognize that similarity – but I love “the nobility of the dill, cool in its silences and cathedrals” - that is very very like how I have felt standing next to the dill plant in my mother's garden in the days when it still grew taller than me. “The sun domesticated under the orange's rind”, oh but I have the best painting of that to include here, if only I had the room. Yes, the “green gloom” of the pepper's cave, yes! How pleasing are these? Let us praise them – masterpieces that they are. Is it possible that with practice our praise could be as proficient as Pablo's and McGrath's? I'd like to think so.

From Blossoms

Claude Monet

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward  

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into  

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee

"To take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard..."  What a gorgeous image. If only I could, if only that were possible. Can we get something into our heads enough that nothing can shake it out? I'd like to think that on some dark day to come, some future moment of despair I might take the thread in my hand and follow it down twisting trails to this orchard of joy, this reserve of sweetness, this living breathing growing hope for always flowers and fruit. Is that possible? I can only find out if I take what I love inside, if I do some work on this orchard.

I Now Become Myself

David Gauld

Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before—"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

May Sarton

That “now I become myself” is a declaration of intent. It’s as if the speaker has come to a point where she is no longer willing to run in fear, or rush in pursuit, or imitate anyone else. She has chosen to stand still, “rooted by love”. “My work, my love, my time, my face…growing like a plant”. “In this single hour I live all of myself and do not move…” How different a place this is from Derek Mahon’s “Heraclitus on Rivers” from back in April. That speaker was standing in the ever-changing river, this one is rooted in the earth. Rooted and growing. It reminds me of Ephesians 6:13 where life is described as a battle for which we put our armour on, piece by piece, “and having done all, to stand.” To be here, to stand still. And my favorite line, "So all the poem is, can give, grows in me to become the song." What is this song that grows in us? I suppose we will have to wait and see.