UNNAMED FRUIT
(For A. E. Coppard)
What fruit grows viewless in my garden plot,
So red the sun is shamed,
Tipped with green starshine and with opal flamed!
Days shall not rot
My fruit so sacred that it is not named.
Not with a carnal lip shalt thou devour
A pulp so tragic-sweet.
For here the juices of disaster meet
When silly power
Gives form to fancy that a man might eat.
Leave us a single tree of precious fruit;
One dream to be our own;
One shape which shall not stammer into stone;
One sweet song mute
To sing with fleshless lips when flesh is flown