Still Life with Apples and a Pomegranate, by Gustave Courbet
Margaret Atwood
This is the plum season, the nights
blue and distended, the moon
hazed, this is the season of peaches
 
with their lush lobed bulbs
that glow in the dusk, apples
that drop and rot
sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands
 
No more the shrill voices
that cried Need Need
from the cold pond, bladed and urgent as new grass
 
Now it is the crickets
that say Ripe Ripe
slurred in the darkness, while the plums
 
dripping on the lawn outside
our window, burst
with a sound like thick syrup
muffled and slow
 
The air is still
warm, flesh moves over
flesh, there is no
 
hurry.
Liked or faved by...
Other works by Margaret Atwood...



Top