cookitaly

by Elizabeth Zezza, a student learning the English Language

The wayfarer eats what’s offered him
in exchange for a tale or a song.
There’s no food that can harm him,
since encounters heal
just like songs do, and tales, too.

It happened once, around noontime,
that the wayfarer, invited in,
was asked to sit
on a low, white stone wall,
under the shade of a creeping vine,
in such a way
as to behold the sea.
There he was served “spaghetti”
topped with dry breadcrumbs,
and maybe some olives
and then some figs, perhaps, that’s all,
as he allowed his gaze to wander on
towards the far horizon.

Garlic cloves in a large pan
frying in oil till golden brown
then taken out
and in the fragrant oil,
dry breadcrumbs frying
till crisp and gold.
The cooked pasta is now drained
and to the sauce added,
then sprinkled with pepper,
stirred and served, topped
with basil leaves, freshly chopped.

Another time, again at noon,
a dish of pasta was offered him,
now with tomato sauce and basil leaves.
On every dish the cook arranged
fried egg-plants, cut into stars,
for he loved beauty, as artists do.

That’s how the pilgrim feeds,
accepting all is offered him,
for nothing can be harmful,
since encounters heal,
just like songs do, and tales, too.

The original image is from this Italian recipe site

The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.

Then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom, with your lips.

But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.

Every fruit has its secret.

The fig is a very secretive fruit.

………………………………

You can read the rest of the poem here.

The image is from this gardening site

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I’d call me Us.

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battering upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

If you climb a lemon tree

feel its bark

with your feet and knees,

smell its white flowers

rub in your hands its leaves.

Remember

the tree is older than you

and in its branches

you might find stories.

- translation from the Spanish original below by Ravi Kopra

——————————————————

Arbol de limón

Jennifer Clement

Si te subes a un árbol de limón

siente la corteza

con tus rodillas y pies,

huele sus flores blancas,

talla las hojas

entre tus manos.

Recuerda,

el árbol es mayor que tú

y tal vez encuentres cuentos

entre sus ramas.

Image from Chambers’ Book of Days

by 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.

We don’t even take time
To come up for air.
We keep our mouths full and busy
Eating bread and cheese
And smooching in between.

No sooner have we made love
Than we are back in the kitchen.
While I chop the hot peppers,
She grins at me
And stirs the shrimp on the stove.

How good the wine tastes
That has run red
Out of a laughing mouth!
Down her chin
And on to her naked tits.

“I’m getting fat,” she says,
Turning this way and that way
Before the mirror.
“I’m crazy about her shrimp!’
I shout to the gods above.

- Charles Simic, The Voice at 3:00 A.M. : Selected Late and New Poems, 2003

(Sonnet 98)
by William Shakespeare

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him,
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

e.e.cummings

A poem by Reginald Gibbons

In cold
spring air the
white wisp-
visible
breath of
a blackbird
singing—
we don’t know
to un-
wrap these blind-
folds we
keep thinking
we are
seeing through

Her parents always dreaded peas
For Mabel could not handle these.

Full fun poem here

betwixt between dawn’s shattered shin
and the honey-bake of midday,
i walk through the dirt rows,
flanked with breathing emerald.
the air was a stinking flower
my clothes a poison
my bootheels a tumbling clumsy.
tarnished brass booms from the ground,
a hundred prison breaks
green under the steam of the sun
the soil
the soil,
toucas of the earth,
ripe with the worm and the fallen petal,
holding snotty spears of asparagus
within it’s alkaline skin,
waltzes green waiting for the drop of the digger’s spade.
asparagus my jewel
asparagus my map
asparagus my saxophone
there will be no milquetoast half-tries,
no haypenny excavations,
no cover versions by the dead buried there,
no atlas choking on fingernails.
there will be a fervent gathering of sharp bouquets
there will be cutting
and a nosh of the snot clots.
there will be vegetable fornication
and adultery soaked in brine.
there will be no yesterday and no tomorrow,
only a now
heavy with dirty fingernails and smelly piss.
asparagus my splint
asparagus my hatch
asparagus my earthen fever

© Michael Gravel

http://www.michaelgravel.com/poems/the-perigee-of-asparagus