than Bosch.
Who cared?
I would have said nonsense
to please you
& frequently did.
This took the form,
of course,
of fighting you.
We fought so gorgeously!
We fought like one boxer
& his punching bag.
We fought like mismatched twins.
We fought like the secret sharer
& his shade.
Now we’re apart.
Time doesn’t heal
the baby to the womb.
Separateness is real
& keeps on growing.
One by one the mothers
drop away,
the lovers leave,
the babies outgrow clothes.
Some get insomnia—
the poet’s disease—
& sit up nights
nursing
at the nipples
of their pens.
I have made hot milk
& kissed you where you are.
I have cursed my curses.
I have cleared the air.
& now I sit here writing,
breathing you.
The Eggplant Epithalamion
For Grace St David Griffin
& for Iris Love
“Mostly you eat eggplant at least once a day,” she explained. “A Turk won’t marry a woman unless she can cook eggplant at least a hundred ways.”
Archaeologist Iris Love, speaking of the cuisine on digs in Turkey. The New York Times, February 4, 1971
1
There are more than a hundred Turkish poems
about eggplant.
I would like to give you all of them.
If you scoop out every seed,
you can read me backward
like an Arabic book.
Look.
2
(Lament in Aubergine)
Oh aubergine,
egg-shaped
& as shiny as if freshly laid—
you are a melancholy fruit.
Solarium Melongena .
Every animal is sad
after eggplant.
3
(Byzantine Eggplant Fable)
Once upon a time on the coast of Turkey
there lived a woman who could cook eggplant 99 ways.
She could slice eggplant thin as paper.
She could write poems on it & batter-fry it.
She could bake eggplant & broil it.
She could even roll the seeds in banana-
flavored cigarette papers
& get her husband high on eggplant.
But he was not pleased.
He went to her father & demanded his bride-price back.
He said he’d been cheated.
He wanted back two goats, twelve chickens
& a camel as reparation.
His wife wept & wept.
Her father raved.
The next day she gave birth to an eggplant.
It was premature & green
& she had to sit on it for days
before it hatched.
“This is my hundredth eggplant recipe,” she screamed.
“I hope you’re satisfied!”
(Thank Allah that the eggplant was a boy.)
4
(Love & the Eggplant)
On the warm coast of Turkey, Miss Love
eats eggplant
“at least once a day.”
How fitting that love should eat eggplant,
that most aphrodisiac fruit.
Fruit of the womb
of Asia Minor,
reminiscent of eggs,
of Istanbul’s deep purple nights
& the Byzantine eyes of Christ.
I remember the borders of egg & dart
fencing us off from the flowers & fruit
of antiquity.
I remember the egg & tongue
probing the lost scrolls of love.
I remember the ancient faces
of Aphrodite
hidden by dust
in the labyrinth under
the British Museum
to be finally found by Miss Love
right there
near Great Russell Square.
I think of the hundreds of poems of the eggplant
& my friends who have fallen in love
over an eggplant,
who have opened the eggplant together
& swum in its seeds,
who have clung in the egg of the eggplant
& have rocked to sleep
in love’s dark purple boat.
Touch
The house of the body
is a stately manor
open for nothing
never to the public.
But
for the owner of the house,
the key-holder—
the body swings open
like Ali Baba’s mountain
glistening with soft gold
& red jewels.
These cannot be stolen
or sold for money.
They only glisten
when the mountain opens
by magic
or its own accord.
The gold triangle of hair,
its gentle ping ,
the pink quartz crystals
of the skin,
the ruby nipples,
the lapis
of the veins
that swim the breast…
The key-holder
is recognized
by the way he holds
the body.
He is recognized
by touch.
Touch is the first sense to awaken
after the body’s little death
in sleep.
Touch is the first sense
to alert the raw red infant
to a world of pain.
The body glimmers
on its dark mountain
pretending
Who cared?
I would have said nonsense
to please you
& frequently did.
This took the form,
of course,
of fighting you.
We fought so gorgeously!
We fought like one boxer
& his punching bag.
We fought like mismatched twins.
We fought like the secret sharer
& his shade.
Now we’re apart.
Time doesn’t heal
the baby to the womb.
Separateness is real
& keeps on growing.
One by one the mothers
drop away,
the lovers leave,
the babies outgrow clothes.
Some get insomnia—
the poet’s disease—
& sit up nights
nursing
at the nipples
of their pens.
I have made hot milk
& kissed you where you are.
I have cursed my curses.
I have cleared the air.
& now I sit here writing,
breathing you.
The Eggplant Epithalamion
For Grace St David Griffin
& for Iris Love
“Mostly you eat eggplant at least once a day,” she explained. “A Turk won’t marry a woman unless she can cook eggplant at least a hundred ways.”
Archaeologist Iris Love, speaking of the cuisine on digs in Turkey. The New York Times, February 4, 1971
1
There are more than a hundred Turkish poems
about eggplant.
I would like to give you all of them.
If you scoop out every seed,
you can read me backward
like an Arabic book.
Look.
2
(Lament in Aubergine)
Oh aubergine,
egg-shaped
& as shiny as if freshly laid—
you are a melancholy fruit.
Solarium Melongena .
Every animal is sad
after eggplant.
3
(Byzantine Eggplant Fable)
Once upon a time on the coast of Turkey
there lived a woman who could cook eggplant 99 ways.
She could slice eggplant thin as paper.
She could write poems on it & batter-fry it.
She could bake eggplant & broil it.
She could even roll the seeds in banana-
flavored cigarette papers
& get her husband high on eggplant.
But he was not pleased.
He went to her father & demanded his bride-price back.
He said he’d been cheated.
He wanted back two goats, twelve chickens
& a camel as reparation.
His wife wept & wept.
Her father raved.
The next day she gave birth to an eggplant.
It was premature & green
& she had to sit on it for days
before it hatched.
“This is my hundredth eggplant recipe,” she screamed.
“I hope you’re satisfied!”
(Thank Allah that the eggplant was a boy.)
4
(Love & the Eggplant)
On the warm coast of Turkey, Miss Love
eats eggplant
“at least once a day.”
How fitting that love should eat eggplant,
that most aphrodisiac fruit.
Fruit of the womb
of Asia Minor,
reminiscent of eggs,
of Istanbul’s deep purple nights
& the Byzantine eyes of Christ.
I remember the borders of egg & dart
fencing us off from the flowers & fruit
of antiquity.
I remember the egg & tongue
probing the lost scrolls of love.
I remember the ancient faces
of Aphrodite
hidden by dust
in the labyrinth under
the British Museum
to be finally found by Miss Love
right there
near Great Russell Square.
I think of the hundreds of poems of the eggplant
& my friends who have fallen in love
over an eggplant,
who have opened the eggplant together
& swum in its seeds,
who have clung in the egg of the eggplant
& have rocked to sleep
in love’s dark purple boat.
Touch
The house of the body
is a stately manor
open for nothing
never to the public.
But
for the owner of the house,
the key-holder—
the body swings open
like Ali Baba’s mountain
glistening with soft gold
& red jewels.
These cannot be stolen
or sold for money.
They only glisten
when the mountain opens
by magic
or its own accord.
The gold triangle of hair,
its gentle ping ,
the pink quartz crystals
of the skin,
the ruby nipples,
the lapis
of the veins
that swim the breast…
The key-holder
is recognized
by the way he holds
the body.
He is recognized
by touch.
Touch is the first sense to awaken
after the body’s little death
in sleep.
Touch is the first sense
to alert the raw red infant
to a world of pain.
The body glimmers
on its dark mountain
pretending
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