A Fine Pear

It falls to the Saturday Blogger to round out a week of fruit-themed posts and I'm feeling particularly autumnal tonight, so figured I would 'big up' the oft-overlooked pear. It's ripe for reappraisal...

Although it is habitually relegated to second place behind the apple (lower on the stairs, so to speak), there is a good case for arguing that 'a pear a day' will do you more good than its more famous cousin; (not that they are closely related, but they are both members of the plant family Rosaceae - yep,  roses believe it or not).

Here's what is so good about pears. Firstly they are hypoallergenic. Fewer people have an adverse reaction to pears than to just about any other fruit, which is why pear is commonly found in baby-foods and why it is often the first fruit that infants are exposed to. Pears are also high in dietary fibre (especially the skin) and one pear a day will provide all the fibre a person needs to maintain a healthy digestive system and to lower bad cholesterol levels. Next they are low in both calories and carbohydrates and low on the glycemic index, so are great for diabetics or anyone needing to keep their blood sugar levels low. In addition they are full of anti-oxidants like vitamin C and copper; also vitamin B complex, E and K all of which boost the immune system, boron which helps the body retain calcium and counter osteoporosis and phytonutrients like beta-carotene and lutein which have anti-inflammatory properties.

Given all of those health benefits, it's not hard to understand why the miraculous pear came to symbolise immortality in ancient China.

What is more difficult to account for is the marked ascendancy of the apple over the sumptuous pear.

Is it simply because apples are hardier and longer-lasting, (not given to bruising and rotting so quickly)? Is it because pears are messier to eat? I suspect both to be major factors. In my opinion, however, there is nothing finer than a just-ripe pear sliced and accompanied by a little cheese. Mouth-watering (and healthy).

Nowadays, like so much else, the vast majority of the world's pear production is centred on China - a quite staggering 80% (that's over 20 million tons of pears annually), with Argentina (at slightly under 1 million tons) a distant second. Of course, most of the pears consumed in Europe are grown within the EU (Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and France in descending order of tonnage - and the UK doesn't even feature on the list).

Given the predominance of China as a pear producer and given the rapidly rising levels of pollution in that country as it heaves itself to the top of the world's table of industrialised nations, I began to speculate about what might happen to its vast orchards as the problem of climate change escalates - widespread air pollution, a ravaged bee population (with a nod to last week's blog), smog-filled skies through which the sun rarely penetrates and frequent dousing of acid rain - not a great environment for growing fruit!

In keeping with the conceptual pun of the blog's title, I offer you two poems this week. The first is posted as confirmation (for those who doubted it after my somewhat tongue-in-cheek blog about the Romantics a few weeks ago) that I really do like the poetry of John Keats, (Keatsy to his mates). It paints a rich picture of a harmonious and untainted natural world. The second, per my dystopian musings above, is the latest bitter fruit of my own tree. I hope you will enjoy both and maybe muse about the changes that 200 years of messing with the planet have wrought (progress at what price?)

To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, late flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor.
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep
  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
  And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wilful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
  And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden croft;
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
                                                  
                                                         John Keats (1819)

Perry Groves
Before this latest revolution
turned the natural order
upside down, these orchards,
framed since ancient Cathay days,
would fill the fruit bowl of the world
with golden pears to spare,
ripe with the juice of immortality.

Now sunshine rarely penetrates
vast layerings of toxic smog,
so serried rows of stunted trees
struggle perennially to put forth
their show of snow in spring,
and decimated colonies of bees
are labouring against the odds
on ravaged wing to do their thing,
while caustic rains
have blighted leaf and limb
in every fast-declining perry grove.

Witness
the harvest of man's immorality,
for paradoxically
nothing is pear-shaped anymore
and suddenly everything is.

As a bonus, here's a hyper-linked musical mood-piece redolent of the time of the season, courtesy of Pink Floyd:  Fat Old Sun

Thanks for reading - this blog counts as one of your five-a-day, S ;-)

Read More

Wine - a poetic tasting.

According to Persian mythology, wine was discovered by a woman. She drank the fermented juice from grapes stored in a jar, went to sleep, and surprisingly woke up cured of a headache, instead of suffering from the world's first hangover as one might have expected. The classical period of Arab civilisation spawned a rich corpus of Bacchic poetry, which had its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia.  

(Last night I could not sleep) so give me to drink of the

maiden wine who has donned the grey locks of old age

whilst still in the womb;

A wine which (when poured) is replenished with youth…

One preserved for a day when its seal is pierced, though

             It is the confidant of Time itself;

It has been aged, such that if it were possessed of an

            eloquent tongue,

It would sit proudly amongst people and tell a tale of an a

             ancient time.  
                                                            P.K.

‘Khamriyya’, The Encylopedia of Islam (new edn.) vol.iv (Leiden, 1978). 998 -1009  

My father kept a copy of The Rubayat of Omar Kyam with him,  throughout his five years of service with the Royal Corps of Signals during WW2.  After visiting the following verses, I am not surprised that he became a publican, he liked a drink but never before 9 in the evening and never to excess.  

And David’s lips are locket; but in divine

High-piping Pehlevi, with “Wine! Wine! Wine!

Red Wine!” the Nightingale cries to the Rose

That sallow cheek of hers t’ incarnadine. 

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring

Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To flutter–and the Bird is on the Wing. 

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,

Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,

The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,

The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

Then to the lip of this poor earthen Urn

I lean’d, the Secret of my Life to learn:

And Lip to Lip it murmur’d–“While you live

Drink!–for, once dead, you never shall return.” 

Perplext no more with Human or Divine,

To-morrow’s tangle to the winds resign,

And lose your fingers in the tresses of

The Cypress–slender Minister of Wine. 

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press

End in what All begins and ends in–Yes;

Think then you are To-day what Yesterday

You were–To-morrow You shall not be less. 

So when that Angel of the darker

Drink At last shall find you by the river-brink,

And, offering his Cup, invite your

Soul Forth to your Lips to quaff–you shall not shrink. 

For “Is” and “Is-not” though with Rule and Line

And “Up” and “Down” by Logic I define,

Of all that one should care to fathom,

Was never deep in anything but–Wine. 

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,

Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape

Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and

He bid me taste of it; and ’twas–the Grape! 

The Grape that can with Logic absolute

The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:

The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice

Life’s leaden metal into Gold transmute. 

 

 

 

 

Wine became the drink of the gods, whether they were Egyptian, Sumerian, or Greek: The early eities of wine were often women, since they were also associated with fertility. The symbolism of wine, as well as its effect, became potent as it was adopted into religious ritual. Another source of potent images, the sea, which was crucial to early transport and communication, was given the feminine gender by the Greeks. When the ancient Greek poet Homer sang of "the wine-dark sea" he was linking two forces central in Mediterranean life to create an image which continues to have great emotive power.

 Li Qingzhao was a Chinese poet of the Song dynasty. Born in Zhangqiu into a family of scholars, Qingzhao was unusually outgoing and knowledgeable of a woman of noble birth. Before she got married, her poetry was already well known within elite circles. Marrying Zhao Mingcheng in 1811, his absences for work fuelled a lot of her poetry, which is often imbued with yearning and explores the effects of wine on her thoughts and feelings.

Light mists and heavy clouds,

melancholy the long dreay day,

In the golden censer

the burning incense is dying away.

It is again time

for the lovely Double-Nith Festival;

The coolness of midnight

penetrates my screen of sheer silk

and chills my pillow of jade.

After drinking wine at twilight

under the chrysanthemum hedge,

My sleeves are perfumed

by the faint fragrance of the plants.

Oh, I cannot say it is not enchanting,

Only, when the west wind stirs the curtain,

I see that I am more graceful

than the yellow flowers.

  

And by all accounts, the Victorian romantic poets drank a surfeit of wine on their tours of Europe.  This extract from John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale. 

O, for a draught of vintage! That hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim. 
 

I am not going to attempt to compete with any of the aforementioned poets but will end with a newly acquired poem, by Chilean poet and Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Pablo Neruda. It is a deep, rich poem with subtle hints of plum and Autumn fruits... 

Ode to Wine

Wine color of day

wine color of night

wine with your feet of purple

or topaz blood,

wine,

starry child of the earth,

wine, smooth as a golden sword,

soft as ruffled velvet,

wine spiral-shelled and suspended,

loving, of the sea,

you’ve never been contained in one glass,

in one song, in one man,

choral, you are gregarious

and, at least, mutual

memories;
on your wave

we go from tomb to tomb,

stonecutter of icy graves,

and we weep transitory tears,

but your beautiful spring suit is different,

the heart climbs to the branches,

the wind moves the day,

nothing remains in your motionless soul.

Wine stirs the spring,

joy grows like a plant,

walls, large rocks fall,

abysses close up, song is born.

Oh thou, jug of wine, in the desert

with the woman I love,

said the old poet.

Let the pitcher of wine and its kiss to the kiss of love.
 

My love, suddenly,

your hip

is the curve of the wineglass

filled to the brim,

your breast is the cluster,

your hair the light of alcohol

your nipples, the grapes

your navel pure seal stamped on your belly of a barrel,

and your love the cascade of unquenchable wine,

the brightness that falls on my sense

the earthen splendour of life. 
 

But you are more than love,

burning kiss

of ignited heart-

vino de vida, you are also

fellowship, transparency,

chorus of discipline abundance of flowers.

I love the light of a bottle of intelligent wine

upon a table

when people are talking,

that they drink it,

that in each drop of gold

or ladle of purple,

they remember that autumn worked

until the barrels were filled with wine

and let the obscure man learn,

in the ceremony of his business,

to remember the soil and his duties,

to propagate the canticle of the fruit. 

Pablo Neruda. 1954

 

Raise your glasses, lads and lasses.  Thanks for reading - Adele

Read More