A Bowl Of Pears

Swarthy as oilcloth and as squat as Sancho Panza wearing a beret’s little stalk the pear itself suggests the application of some rigour the finest blade from the knife drawer here to freshen it is one slice and then another the north fall south fall facets of glacier the snow-clean juice with a slight crunch that is sweet I find lintels and plinths of white marble clean angled where there slides the perfume globule a freshness like the breeze that is felt upon the opening of day’s fan Enku sculptor of pine stumps revealed the ten thousand Buddhas with his attacks the calligraphic axe Rationalised shape shaped with vertical strokes I have made of your jowled buttocks a squareness neatly pelvic A Sunday of rain and like a drain a pipe that was agog and is chock-a-block the limber thunder rebounds and bounds it comes pouring down a funnel the wrong way around broadcasts its buffoon militance over the houses all afternoon Undone the laces of rain dangle on the windows now slicing iron a butcher is sharpening the light of his favourite knife its shimmers carving stripes into the garden And I have carved the pear-shaped head with eyes close set as pips that Picasso saw his poor friend who had gone to war a cubist snowman the fragrant and fatal Apollinaire