Ode to Tomatoes - Pablo Neruda and Erica Jong, My Teachers

I wanted to write an ode to the Tomato, goddess of the garden, today after picking that blue bowl above almost full of them from my little garden, my first harvest. This is my first good crop of tomatoes in over 4 or 5 years, yes years! I don’t know why they did so well this year. It could be the four egg shells I put in the earth below each plant to ward off blossom drop, or it could be the saltwater spray I made and sprayed them with, which, according to my sister-in-law’s grandpa is a magic potion that both fertilizes and keeps bugs away.

Some have told me it’s because I planted Basil with my Tomatoes. I think the new soil and new spot may have helped because the old place I used to plant them had black spot disease in the soil. I like to attribute it to love and lots of water and good soil and me watering them, often, with my own salty tears.

I gave up writing my ode (well, I'll still write it, but later) when I remembered that the mighty poet, Pablo Neruda, had already written one and I could never touch the level of his genius. I also recalled that Erica Jong, whose writing turned me on to Neruda, loved to write about fruits and vegetables. It was her writing that taught me to write about the ‘ordinary’ things in my life.

So, humbly bowing in gratitude to these, my teachers, I post a quote by Ms. Jong, a site where many of her poems are posted which you can read at your leisure, and two beautiful masterpieces by Neruda, "Ode to Tomatoes" followed by his magnificent, untouchable "Poetry".


“If a woman wants to be a poet,
She must dwell in the house of the tomato.” ~Erica Jong, from ‘Fruits & Vegetables’


http://www.ericajong.com/poems/


Happy Summer to you all! Blessings, ~Marion





Ode To Tomatoes
By Pablo Neruda


The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like a tomato,
its juice runs
through the streets.
In December, unabated,
the tomato
invades the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes its ease
on countertops, among glasses,
butter dishes, blue salt cellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it: the knife sinks
into living flesh,
red viscera a cool
sun, profound, inexhaustible,
populates the salads of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we pour oil,
essential child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding of the day,
parsley hoists its flag,
potatoes bubble vigorously,
the aroma of the roast
knocks at the door, it's time!
come on! and, on
the table, at the midpoint of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile star, displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit, no husk, no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.


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I can't even think of Neruda without this poem coming into my head. I've probably posted it many times before, but I never tire of reading it. Enjoy!



POETRY
By Pablo Neruda


And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.


I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery, felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.


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