Have you heard about Scotland's mystery paper sculpting library phantom? This “poetree” is one of ten bookish gifts to public spaces in Edinburgh, given anonymously “in support of libraries, books, words, ideas...” Have a look at this beautiful story of secret, gratuitous acts of art and whimsy.
Bananas are back! We are celebrating their return with gusto. Also the mangos have arrived from their northern climes, sweet and succulent, smelling of paradise. But king among the yellow fruits is lemon. My favourite thing at the moment is pasta with lemon, chilli and garlic - unbelievably good. Lemon with thyme on chicken or potatoes works a treat, and lemon desserts beat chocolate hands down in my book. I can't sufficiently rhapsodise this fruit. But Pablo Neruda could. Here's his mouth-puckeringly exquisite poem “A Lemon.”
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it -
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.
In Shakespeare's Sonnet 48 he frets over the freedom of his beloved (the unnamed Youth) to come and go, to be stolen by another because he can't be kept under lock and key the way possessions can. It's a striking expression of love taking the form of jealous fear.
It's about a person, but as I read these lines I can't help but think of Shakespeare's work as the lost treasure. Because he couldn't lock it up, nothing prevents “vulgar thieves” (hello Oxfordians) from preying on this prize so dear.
How careful was I when I took my way,
Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
That to my use it might unused stay
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,
Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,
Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
Thee have I not locked up in any chest,
Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
Within the gentle closure of my breast,
From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;
And even thence thou wilt be stol’n I fear,
For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.
Here's a gorgeous taste of Mark Crick's Household tips of the great writers: recipes in the style of Virginia Woolf, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Raymond Chandler. The latter is particularly good:
"I sipped on my whiskey sour, ground out my cigarette on the chopping board and watched a bug trying to crawl out of the basin. I needed a table at Maxim's, a hundred bucks and a gorgeous blonde; what I had was a leg of lamb and no clues."
Delicious.