A Peach

I ate my second peach of the summer this morning.  It was ripe and juicy but not yet at that peak summersweet magic.  Still, as I picked peach flesh out from between my teeth, I found myself with Prufrock in my head.  I can't eat a peach without thinking about that poem and about an essay about New York that Joan Didion wrote.  Then I get stuck with misremembered poetry in my head.  In high school I was made to memorize the end of Prufrock, but instead of remembering that part, fragments of the whole poem come back and mix themselves around in my memory out of order.  So I looked it up:

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

Shall I part my hair behind?  Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of  the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Comments

[Patrick]

posters come & go, posting of michaelangelo

[Frances Nash]

Do you like lychees?