Sunday 6 March 2011

Ode to a Lemon, Neruda

As we anticipate our lemon tree blooming, wondering if it will set fruit this year or not here is a poem to the lemon tree by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. It is a wonderfully organic, sensuous poem. Every year for the past 4 years or more the tree has blossomed, but the fruit drops without setting, at best. This year we live in hope...


Ode to a Lemon
Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
the harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Sowing season 2011

 Here are the seedlings one week on from the pictures below. First, ate the sunflowers, and also one or two globe artichoke, violet. Second,are the emerging barlotto seedlings. Third, are dwarf French beans. Fourth is labelled Goldtuft, which is a variety of safflower. The next is Zinnia, Giant Scarlet, followed by field poppy, with Cavolo Nero in the pots behind. So far germination has been good to very good. The tomato seedlings have grown greatly and need to be potted on. I cannot do that until Saturday.