William Blake
The Sick Rose
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Jennifer Compton
Peaches
Now you are making me laugh and remember.
We had a peach tree next to our septic tank.
Over the years the tree had dug its roots
well and truly right into the good muck.
The taste of those peaches! Hot and sweet!
Many in the village would come and beg
for a bucket of the good peaches, the peaches
shaped like buttocks, with a pink flush.
I would try to (tastefully) tell them exactly why
the flavour was so excellent – You are eating us.
Our ordure, our guano. But it never put them off.
It was a clingstone peach with a golden flesh.
The rosellas and the bowerbirds would get drunk
and disorderly on the ripe fruit up in the boughs.
I would climb – go eyeball to eyeball with them -
reach out a hand and slap them out of the tree.
Then the Council told us to get a new system
and damn! Those peaches weren’t as golden.
The reality of imagination leaves out nothing. It is the most complete reality that we can know. Imagination takes in the world of sense experience, and rather than trading it for a world of symbols, delights in it for what it is.
— Jeanette Winterson
