Saturday, February 20, 2010

"As For The Fruit, It Had No Taste At All"

I've had this poem (especially the line above) in my head for the last few days. Donald Justice wrote it as a graduate student at Iowa. His teacher, John Berryman, was blown away.



The Wall

The wall surrounding them they never saw;
The angels, often. Angels were as common
As birds or butterflies, but looked more human.
As long as the wings were furled, they felt no awe.
Beasts, too, were friendly. They could find no flaw
In all of Eden: this was the first omen.
The second was the dream which woke the woman.
She dreamed she saw the lion sharpen his claw.
As for the fruit, it had no taste at all.
They had been warned of what was bound to happen.
They had been told of something called the world.
They had been told and told about the wall.
They saw it now; the gate was standing open.

-Donald Justice

6 comments:

Subliminal Gary said...

The fruit has that, at least, in common with Bret.

JMW said...

That's fantastic. I like Justice a lot; discovered his work in the Hotel New Hampshire when I was going through an Irving phase in early college. His poems figure in that book, and I think Irving had been a student of his.

Anyway, thanks for sharing.

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