A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
STILLEBEN MIT FRUCHTSCHALE
AT THE HANNOVER LANDESMUSEUM
BY PRAGUE ARTIST EMIL ORLIK (1870 - 1937)
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Fairies and Elves Pick Apples
by English Illustrator Arthur Rackham, 1867 - 1939
An autumnal sense of resignation permeates the following poem by Robert Frost. I like the way that he is "done with apple - picking now" not because the job is entirely finished -- since, in fact, it's not: "there's a barrel that I didn't fill" and "may be two or three / Apples I didn't pick" -- but because he has just had enough; he's "overtired." Even though there may be a few odds and ends not yet tied up, the time for this particular enterprise has come to an end: "Essence of winter sleep is on the night."
Day after day of harvesting has worn a pattern of exhaustion into every waking and sleeping hour: "Magnified apples appear and disappear . . . My instep arch . . . keeps the ache . . . keeps the pressure of a ladder-round." Sometimes a task can wear a body down. A month or so ago, he was eager for such an abundant crop and could not bear the thought of even an ounce of waste; but enough is enough!
You might remember that the narrator in "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," has "promises to keep, / And miles to go" before he sleeps. The narrator of "After Apple - Picking," however, has gone the distance and is craving, at last, some untroubled sleep. He refers in the last few lines to a hibernation, perhaps, or the long metaphorical sleep of death, "Or just some human sleep."
After Apple - Picking
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
Robert Frost , 1874 - 1963
Four-time Pulitzer Prize winning well - loved American poet
The narrator of another Frost poem brings a similar sense of mission to his chore. Gathering up "bags full of leaves," he makes "a great noise / Of rustling all day," but what does he have to show for it? Still, as with those apples considered imperfect for whatever reason, "a crop is a crop":
Gathering Leaves
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?
Robert Frost
(see also my
earlier post )
Walnut trees at the end of our driveway, not our favorite,
yet I'm proud to say I've picked up thousands!
A crop's a crop, right?
(I'm also thinking green tomatoes here!)
Contemporary poet, Larry Levis, writes of yet another harvest, not apples, not leaves, but walnuts. As a crop, they may be less valuable than apples but more useful than dry leaves, if you have the patience to find a use for them. I wonder, in the poem, is it a black walnut tree, dropping an endless supply of the troublesome rough green nuts? Are the disenchanted lovers staining their fingers as they fill basket after basket?
Sadly, in this poem, the walnuts carry the connotation of fruitlessness. The weary act of gathering them represents the sad continuation of an exhausted romance, so dire that the couple is not even motivated to deal with the hopelessness of the situation. Such deliberation would require too much effort; instead, they proceed listlessly with no hope of change, only the dull promise of a future as bleak as the present:
We'll go on as always harvesting walnuts
on our hands and knees,
and die voicelessly
as a sedan full of cigar smoke
sinking under a bridge.
We'll turn slowly, flowers
in the mouths of drowned cattle
In a dawn of burned fields,
the sun disappoints you,
and the blight you begin to remember
is me.
Like an Alp overlooking a corpse
I explain nothing.
Larry Levis, 1946 - 1996
Award - winning American professor and poet
I'm done with apple - picking now.
We'll go on as always,
harvesting walnuts on our hands and knees.
For as long as I've known the work of Frost and Levis, these two phrases have rung together in my mind, connected by their tone of resignation. The apple - picker is resolved to call it quits, accepting the finality of a season that has run its course. But for the walnut - gatherers -- no resolution; just a repeating decimal of bleak indecision. Why are their hearts so heavy? Not entirely clear; not all is explained.
If you can, do try to harvest your crops, whatever they may be, with a happy heart.
The Large Walnut Tree at L'Hermitage, 1875
by French Impressionist Camille Pissarro, 1830 - 1903
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, October 28, 2011
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