 | |
| |
| The proper way to eat a fig, in society, |
| Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump, |
| And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower. |
| |
| Then you throw away the skin |
| 5 | Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx, |
| After you have taken off the blossom with your lips. |
| |
| But the vulgar way |
| Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite. |
| |
| Every fruit has its secret. |
| |
| 10 | The fig is a very secretive fruit. |
| As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic: |
| And it seems male. |
| But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female. |
| |
| The Italians vulgarly say, it stands for the female part; the fig-fruit: |
| 15 | The fissure, the yoni, |
| The wonderful moist conductivity towards the centre. |
| |
| Involved, |
| Inturned, |
| The flowering all inward and womb-fibrilled; |
| 20 | And but one orifice. |
| |
| The fig, the horse-shoe, the squash-blossom. |
| Symbols. |
| |
| There was a flower that flowered inward, womb-ward; |
| Now there is a fruit like a ripe womb. |
| |
| 25 | It was always a secret. |
| That's how it should be, the female should always be secret. |
| |
| There never was any standing aloft and unfolded on a bough |
| Like other flowers, in a revelation of petals; |
| Silver-pink peach, venetian green glass of medlars and sorb-apples, |
| 30 | Shallow wine-cups on short, bulging stems |
| Openly pledging heaven: |
| Here's to the thorn in flower! Here is to Utterance! |
| The brave, adventurous rosaceæ. |
| |
| Folded upon itself, and secret unutterable, |
| 35 | And milky-sapped, sap that curdles milk and makes ricotta, |
| Sap that smells strange on your fingers, that even goats won't taste it; |
| Folded upon itself, enclosed like any Mohammedan woman, |
| Its nakedness all within-walls, its flowering forever unseen, |
| One small way of access only, and this close-curtained from the light; |
| 40 | Fig, fruit of the female mystery, covert and inward, |
| Mediterranean fruit, with your covert nakedness, |
| Where everything happens invisible, flowering and fertilisation, and fruiting |
| In the inwardness of your you, that eye will never see |
| Till it's finished, and you're over-ripe, and you burst to give up your ghost. |
| |
| 45 | Till the drop of ripeness exudes, |
| And the year is over. |
| |
| And then the fig has kept her secret long enough. |
| So it explodes, and you see through the fissure the scarlet. |
| And the fig is finished, the year is over. |
| |
| 50 | That's how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the purple slit |
| Like a wound, the exposure of her secret, on the open day. |
| Like a prostitute, the bursten fig, making a show of her secret. |
| |
| That's how women die too. |
| |
| The year is fallen over-ripe, |
| 55 | The year of our women. |
| The year of our women is fallen over-ripe. |
| The secret is laid bare. |
| And rottenness soon sets in. |
| The year of our women is fallen over-ripe. |
| |
| 60 | When Eve once knew in her mind that she was naked |
| She quickly sewed fig-leaves, and sewed the same for the man. |
| She'd been naked all her days before, |
| But till then, till that apple of knowledge, she hadn't had the fact on her mind. |
| |
| She got the fact on her mind, and quickly sewed fig-leaves. |
| 65 | And women have been sewing ever since. |
| But now they stitch to adorn the bursten fig, not to cover it. |
| They have their nakedness more than ever on their mind, |
| And they won't let us forget it. |
| |
| Now, the secret |
| 70 | Becomes an affirmation through moist, scarlet lips |
| That laugh at the Lord's indignation. |
| |
| What then, good Lord! cry the women. |
| We have kept our secret long enough. |
| We are a ripe fig. |
| 75 | Let us burst into affirmation. |
| |
| They forget, ripe figs won't keep. |
| Ripe figs won't keep. |
| |
| Honey-white figs of the north, black figs with scarlet inside, of the south. |
| Ripe figs won't keep, won't keep in any clime. |
| 80 | What then, when women the world over have all bursten into self-assertion? |
| And bursten figs won't keep? |
| |
| San Gervasio. |
