“Festival of Spring,” oil on canvas, by Karel Vítězslav Mašek, 1889.
The Torah says the pomegranate
is holy because it has 613 seeds,
same as the number of commandments,
and the Greeks knew it was precious
when it married tender Persephone
to darkness. All I know is that once,
long ago, I watched you bite into one,
right there on the city street, so hungry
were you for it, that the juice dripped
down your breasts, your hips, the
street, the soil, the dark silent river that
runs under all of it from then to now.
*
Translated from the original Italian:
Equinozio
di B.A. Van Sise
La Torà dice che la melagrana
è sacra perché ha 613 semi,
tanti quanti i comandamenti,
ed i Greci sapevano che era preziosa
quando sposò la tenera Persefone
con l’oscurità. Tutto quello che so è che una volta,
molto tempo fa, ti guardai addentarne una,
proprio lì per strada, eri così affamata,
che il succo ti colava sui seni,
sui fianchi, sulla strada,
sulla terra, nell’oscuro fiume silenzioso che
scorre sotto tutto da allora ad oggi.
B.A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist with three monographs: the visual poetry anthology Children of Grass with Mary-Louise Parker, Invited to Life with Mayim Bialik, and On the National Language with DeLanna Studi. He is a two-time winner of the Independent Book Publishers Awards gold medal, a two-time Prix de la Photographie Paris winner, an Anthem Award winner, a finalist for the Rattle and Kenyon Poetry Prizes, and a winner of the INDIES Book of the Year and the Lascaux Prize for Nonfiction.
