ODE TO TOMATOES  by Pablo Neruda

(translated by Margaret Sayers Peden)

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 saltcellars.

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,

on to 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 colour

and cool completeness.

I am surrounded by tomatoes. We are staying on a small organic farm in Umbria, where the tomatoes in the veggie garden (free to guests) are ripe and bursting with flavour, and beg to be picked and eaten. Local friends also arrive laden with baskets of tomatoes, and carefully explain the names and nature of the many varieties. We sun them on the terrace to finish the ripening process and pile them into pretty bowls for a burst of late summer colour – that’s one group of them in the photo above. And we make tomato salads of every kind – with basil and fruity olive oil, with anchovies and pecorino or little black olives, and with toasted breadcrumbs and garlic. We eat tomato crostini with pesto, we bake and braise tomatoes, and still they come.

The most prized local variety, the Cuore di Buo (oxheart) is very fleshy and ripens to a deep pink rather than a red. My favourite variety is the kind which a tomato-loving friend ironically calls Tesco’s Delight because no supermarket buyer would accept such a craggy, lumpy shape. (This sort might officially be called a Roma? I’m not sure.)  But the taste – ah, the taste!

And so Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to Tomatoes” strikes a deep chord right now. I’m amused to recall how many poems deal so happily with food and food memories – William Carlos Williams’s plum poem, “This is just to say” , is just the first that springs to mind. I hope you enjoy this poem, preferably with a good tomato or three to hand. And do have a look at the other Tuesday Poems.

We decided to spend a night in Parma last week, on our drive from London down to Umbria. (Yup! It’s holiday time again, lucky us, and we’re back on the same little organic farm: our third visit, and loving it as much as ever.)

We’d never been to Parma before but we love the cheese and we love the ham, so honouring those with a visit seemed absolutely right. I even like Parma violets, despite their slightly sickly taste, although I know those haven’t been made in Parma for centuries. Anyway, what’s not to like?

And as it turned out we were spot-on about that – but only because of something we didn’t know about: the Baptistery of the Duomo in the old town. It took my breath away it’s so beautiful – and this in a country filled with astounding beauty of every kind.  The city had the good sense to commission an architect called Benedetti Antelami to build it in 1196, and the octagonal building is covered in pale pink marble from Verona. There’s a lovely statue of Solomon and Sheba outside, which you can just see in the photo above (I took it with my iPhone which doesn’t seem to be as good at focal length as it is at closeups.)

And inside there are 16 alcoves and an astonishing domed ceiling, all decorated with paintings and sculptures. Like this one.

The Michelin guides don’t rate the Baptistery worth the journey (which would give it three stars): it gets only two stars, which means it’s worth a look if you happen to be passing. I think the Tyre Man is mistaken.

Parmigiano is a truly great cheese with complex flavours, and that slightly salty, slightly granular texture has a lot going for it.  And Prosciutto di Parma is the king of hams – a silky, tender, melting jewel in the crown of Italian cuisine.

But the Baptistery! I promise you, seeing the Baptistery will make you forget about food. And in Italy that’s a tough call.

It’s not only the words in the blogroll, it’s also the names of the categories under which I log posts. But it’s kind of pretty, isn’t it? Like an incidental artwork.

I’m not sure exactly how this happened, but since last night I am the proud and excited owner of an ice cream loyalty card. Perhaps I ought to be ashamed at freely admitting an allegiance to something as frivolous as ice cream but I’m not; not at all. I can justify it, I swear I can. I can even proselytise about it – everyone should have one of these cards – honestly, you should. And if you’re sitting comfortably, preferably with a truly excellent ice cream to hand, I’ll explain.

My love of ice cream dates from childhood. My mother used a recipe that involved junket and sweetened condensed milk, and came from a friend of my grandmother’s. It was called Mrs Morgan’s ice cream and it was absolutely delicious, although I’d probably find it too sweet if I made it now. The distinctive texture and taste that comes from using condensed milk – grainy and dense – is unusual now but I found it a few years ago in the ice cream sold from carts on the streets of Trinidad, and it’s a texture that goes well with tropical flavours like mamey and sugar apple.

The best commercially available ice cream I know these days is made by Kohu Road in New Zealand: a small – well, smallish – range of great flavours made by hand from largely organic ingredients. (Kohu Road were thinking of expanding to the UK but I haven’t heard more about that for a while – if anyone else does, please tell me.)

But my most recent ice cream pleasure (and my loyalty card) come from Gelupo in Soho’s Archer Street, which is related to Bocca di Lupo, the smart Italian restaurant across the road. Gelupo have a glorious range of flavours (ricotta, coffee and honey: pine nut and fennel seed: sour cherry granita: blackberry sorbet) and it’s the real deal with added sprinkles of fairy dust. I’d say it was worth the journey, although I admit that depends on where you start from. If it’s from Auckland don’t even think of it, just buy a tub of Kohu Road to take home – I especially recommend the golden syrup flavour, although the vanilla haunts my memory. If you’re in London, no question: Archer Street’s your goal of choice. In between Auckland and London, though, you’ll have to suss it out for yourselves. I’m too busy filling up my Gelupo loyalty card so that I’ll qualify for a freebie.

Thanks, Greg, for updating these: I expect Jon’s not the only reader who will be so, so glad that spider pic has gone.

I’ll talk about all the new photos in time but I’m starting with this one because its subject reflects late summer so prettily. The other week one of my favourite columnists, the food writer Nigel Slater, said he could smell the edge of autumn in the air – and I was frankly horrified. It’s still summer, for pity’s sake! What’s more, it’s one of the best summers we’ve had in London for years! How could he mention autumn? What foolhardy coat-trailing is that?

But I have to admit that because August is officially late summer a few signs of autumn are already on the scene, breeze, whatever.  I’ve certainly noticed that spiders (sorry, Jon) have started web construction outside our bedroom window, which is an autumnal event. The fruit flies that plagued us in the kitchen during July have all vanished. The salad greens in our garden have gone to seed. I even found myself looking out a cardigan on a recent, oddly chilly, morning. So OK, Nigel, I’m not embracing signs of autumn, but I accept they exist.

These glorious flowers belong to one of our plot neighbours at the community gardens where we grow veggies. I’ve been photographing their flowers for some months now, and I think this recent one reflects an undeniably late summer display of colour. (It also displays just how good the camera in my iPhone is – amazingly so, much better than my old, regular camera.)

So: enjoy the last of the golden weather is what I recommend (with a nod to Bruce Mason’s classic play, “The End of the Golden Weather”).  Enjoy! Enjoy! I’m off to Italy next week in search of sun-ripened figs, but that’s another photo.

Song of Allegiance by R.A.K. Mason

Shakespeare Milton Keats are dead

Donne lies in a lowly bed

Shelley at last calm doth lie

knowing ‘whence we are and why’

Byron Wordsworth both are gone

Coleridge Beddoes Tennyson

Houseman neither knows nor cares

how ‘this heavy world’ now fares

Little clinging grains enfold

all the mighty minds of old …

They are gone and I am here

stoutly bringing up the rear

Where they went with limber ease

toil I on with bloody knees

Though my voice is cracked and harsh

stoutly in the rear I march

Though my song have none to hear

boldly bring I up the rear.

I was going to use this poem for the New Zealand Poetry Day, but then I found the Rex Fairburn one and realised I had to use that instead. But this R.A.K. Mason poem is also one I’ve known for years, and I was very pleased to receive permission for its use from the Hocken Librarian at Otago. I love the rhythms of its development, and the contrasts of humour and seriousness. And I suspect Ronald Allison Kells was a poets’ poet. Either way he was also, apparently, a ringer for my Dad.

TO AN EXPATRIATE, by A. R. D. Fairburn

“Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.”

Jeremiah XXII:10

Pine for the needles brown and warm,

think of your nameless native hills,

the seagulls landward blown by storm,

the rabbit that the black dog kills.

Swing with the kelp the ocean sucks,

call to the winds and hear them roar,

the westerly that rips the flax,

the madman at the northeast door.

Dream of the mountain creek that spills

among the stones and cools your feet,

the breeze that sags on smoky hills,

the bubble of the noonday heat.

The embers of your old desire

remembered still will glow, and fade,

and glow again and rise in fire

to plague you like a debt unpaid,

to haunt you like a love betrayed.

I have loved this poem since I first encountered it in an English lecture at Auckland Uni, when I’d read very little New Zealand poetry before and had no real idea that I would become an expatriate. The poem took immediate hold of my heart and imagination and it has been part of the soundtrack of my life ever since. At that first encounter I was struck by both the accuracy of the imagery and its deeply romantic appeal, and all I have to do to bring the whole poem to mind is to start that first line off in my head and I’m away – back on Waiheke Island as a child at my grandparents’ house, or sliding on nikau palms down the back hill beside the lines of pine trees, or … or …

I haven’t lived in New Zealand for any length of time since I left (and the Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse was one of the five books I took in my suitcase on that first plane journey) but I revisit as often as I can, and stay for as long as possible. And New Zealand poetry in general, as well as this poem in particular, now as then, connects me to that set of almost tribal loyalties and understandings which matter a great deal to me.

So I’m delighted to be able to post this on New Zealand’s Poetry Day – I hope you’ll check out the other poems on the Tuesday Poetry blog.

EVEN SUCH IS TIME, by Sir Walter Raleigh

Even such is time, which takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, and all we have,

And pays us naught but age and dust;

Which in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days!

And from which grave, and earth, and dust,

The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

This poem was written the night before his death in 1618, when Raleigh was about 68. Adventurer, explorer, navigator, passionate Protestant, and favourite of Elizabeth I who nevertheless confined him to the Tower of London under threat of death at least twice (although it was Elizabeth’s successor on the throne, James I, who finally executed him). A complicated person for sure and a gloriously successful poet too. This poem seems to hold a perfect tension between an aching and deeply felt sorrow, and a hopeful faith.

Check out the other Tuesday Poems – and there will be an extra helping on the site this coming Friday, for New Zealand’s Poetry Day.

This is the last of the photos on my blog intro page for me to comment on, and it relates to a holiday in Kerala 18 months ago. I took the photo on a sunset boat trip when we were staying at the southern end of the Vembanad Lake, on the Malabar coast of Kerala. The lake is part of an intricate wetland system, and an astonishing place. It sits at sea level, separated from the Arabian Sea only by barrier islands, but it is linked by canals to other coastal lakes, and at least six freshwater rivers feed into it from the Western Ghats. All that means that the water is salt in parts and fresh in others and achieve a delicate balance of the two over most of its area, which is about 1,500 square kilometres.

The sunset boat trip was on a converted Keralan rice boats – a reworked model of Kettuvallam (in the Malayalam language, kettu means ‘tied with ropes’, and vallam means ‘boat’). These were originally used to carry rice and spices through the backwaters up to the port of Kochi (Cochin).  They have thatched roof covers over wooden hulls, and as you can tell from the photo they were steered from the bow rather than the stern.

I know the photo isn’t very clear – my new iPhone takes better photos than this camera ever did – but you can just see the misty barrier islands ahead of the boat and a few other boats ahead and to the sides. But what I liked most was capturing a mood of almost meditative tranquility in the two figures.

The present intro photos will be replaced in the next week or two by a new set – a great relief to one of my friends who tells me he can’t bear the spider pic for very much longer.  Sorry, Jon. But you know (and this goes for anyone else who feels unhappy at the sight of a spider or who’s bored with the blog intro pics, or just likes to go for a low-click rate in their internet life)  if you enter the link directly to the blog you can skip the website, intro page et al.

ON THE ROAD FROM OXFORD by Frances Thomas

The colours have gone crazy this year;

All the flowers have broken out.

On the road from Oxford, we gasp

At the blaze and dazzle of them:

At a meadow gilded with buttercups,

Or blue with a sky-haze of flax.

But it’s the poppies that startle.

Imagine, field after field drenched in scarlet!

A bolt of red silk billowed out in an Indian shop,

Or haze of pure pigment showered by a mad artist;

The whole field flushed and glowing,

So hot, demanding our entire attention,

As if to remind us

That beneath the earth, there is fire,

Beneath the skin, there is blood.

The author of this poem – a friend  and fellow writer –  is putting together a poetry journal this year. It’s a diary of reading poetry over the year, and when she first emailed me about it in April, this is what she said:-

“… it’s a sort of poetry diary, which sprang out of a resolve earlier this year to read more poetry. As well as choosing poems myself, I want to sprinkle the mixture with some poems of other people’s choosing, so it’s not too Frances-centric. Do you think you could choose me a favorite poem of yours that I could add to my list? No need for the whole poem, just the title and poet’s name, and I can find it.  At the moment I’m just collecting things in a ring-binder – and enjoying it enormously:  it’s surprising how engrained some poems are in your consciousness, even if you haven’t read them for ages.”

I have now read the first six months of the journal and simply loved it – the kind of thing you wish you’d thought of doing yourself, and that you wish you had the application and stamina to complete. I also discovered that for her entry on 18th June Frances thought only a poem could properly celebrate the experience of driving through dazzling fields of flowers – and so she wrote her own. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

And do look at the other Tuesday poem entries.