SEE,  TASTE,  TOUCH,  SMELL

Poem for Today - Wednesday - November 5, 2014

ON APPLES

One is not hale until one inhales

The russet of these apples—

Their rosy smell . . .

As from cleft hearts there rises

The green

Veridical stem.

Thus in Cezanne one sees

The stillness of utter rest: an electric calm

Of placement; the apple transcendent—

Flat: cool: the virtual assumed

As real . . .

Anne once refused to have

An apple; yet she held it

And sat there like another, or the first

Eve, who again rejected

Pleasure for the pleasure of a cusp,

Self-worried; the famous prerogative

Of feminine indecision . .

The apple need not be eaten; must be had.

I recall at the end of the road, where rampant boys lived,

Green apples on the ground, ant-laden, brown, abscessed—

We'd chuck them at each other, or at trees.

Hit in the ribs, it hurt.

Ted Mingo showed me.

And sometimes near Cooper Union, peddlers buff

Pippins upon their rusty

Winter sleeves;

Reset each polished crimson

On their cart.

McIntosh are best

Unpeeled, for rosy apple sauce,

For eating, as for fragrance . .

Try them

But you must smell them.

© David Ross

page 507 in

The New Yorker

Book of Poems 1974