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| "Behold, the apple's rounded worlds...." |
Each December 31st, this apple-y feeling comes on like the scent of mulled cider - I can almost taste it, and it always leads me to Laurie Lee's poem, "Apples." It isn't the right season to be thinking of apples; still, I get more apple-y (or even "wanton," as Lee puts it) as each day of the lunatic old year finishes up.
In this poem, Lee (whose Cider with Rosie, a description of life in the Slad Valley of the Cotswolds circa 1920, is not to be missed) recognizes the need to "take entire my season's dole" and welcome whatever comes, be it ripe, sweet, sour, hollow, whole. Life doesn't dish out any one of those things exclusively - it offers up the entire selection to you, to me, to the boy in the poem, to the stallion and starling, to the bent worm and the waltzing wasp. No one gets just the sweetness - life isn't like that - it's a "rounded" world. Yes, there are sweet bites; there's also the black polestar, and there's the rind with its crimson stain.
Still, don't we all want to greet life with the "easy hunger" Lee describes? So I offer "Apples" again - it's turning into my annual New Year's poem - as the year's opening post for Poetry Friday 2015.
The round-up is being hosted by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect - when you're done here, head there to see what other people have posted. And Apple-y New Year, everyone!
Apples
Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.
The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.
They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.
In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.
I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.
The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.
They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.
In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.
I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.
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| Laurie Lee as a young man... |
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| ...and older, walking through the hills above the Slad Valley. |
