I
Oranges beam 
Sleekly as mandarins. 
Their cheeks grained 
As mellow leather is. 
Spice, like a bloom, feathers 
The thin tough skin. 
Where, on a street gone dark, 
Lit windows 
Hole the night, 
Their cosy gold is fellowed. 
They could boast of cousins 
In ancient Spain. 
Spheres of rosy gold, little yellow 
Worlds heaped here at 
6oc a Doz. — 
Sweet juicy 
Oranges. 

II
i
Shapely as violins, the pears 
Look down. 
These, rose-freckled like a strawberry, 
Those, with an autumn cheek of withered brown, 
Alike, their hauteur. 

ii
Beside the leek, Wales' pride, 
The small white onions shine 
As meek as pearls. 

iii
And pumpkins plump as camel-humps, 
And squash: tapering 
Fingers of light. 
Noon turns them to bright as butter thumbs, 
Wartily gesturing to the sun. 

III
The eggplant does not make the gaudy show 
Of pumpkins or pomegranates. Like the crow 
Blackbird: the purple grackle, like the 'cello, 
The eggplant's note is resonantly low. 

It cannot, like the pineapple, display 
A finial elegance; lacks the holiday 
Grace of the grape. Yet this fruit is shaped 
And burnished as those eggs ostriches lay. 

Lying so close to the potato bin, 
It seems too gorgeous for that distant kin. 
Between cusped amethyst and tumbled tubers, 
Choose? Sometimes the stained earth-apples win. 

IV
A large whitecheeked old woman smiling: 
The homely solidity, the beauty of 
The cauliflower is vulgar and beguiling. 

Cauliflower, branched broccoli above, 
And leafy sprouts below, all grown to please, 
What share have they in the quality of love? 

Nothing on earth is unromantic as these 
But turnip lumps. The cauliflower's white 
Florets, broccoli's green, are coarse as frieze. 

The kale is blowsy. New cabbage, curled tight 
As an embryo, the red, purply as cheap stained glass, 
Are commoners, too obvious to delight. 

Yet even the festive, rare asparagus 
Does not take the eye like the simplicity 
Of this vegetable that its neighbors here surpass 

In voluptuous curves, color, delicacy. 
There is a quality better than beguiling 
In the cauliflower's homely solidity, 
Like a large, whitecheeked old woman, smiling. 

V
You with your brush bound to your swelled foiled hand 
Would understand, old painter, this upanddown upanddown 
Reaching and climbing. The grim grocer toils 
Over his chiming pyramids, cares 
Only for custom. 
Each hour despoils the contrived order; evening 
Destroys the flesh. With morning 
Opulence is freshly alive, 
Sounding the sun's note. 
Blunt shapes under drumtight skins, 
Sharp hues, some sweet, 
Their vibrancy repeats: here is a man's 
Livelihood; food to be bought, eaten; goods 
Belonging to vision least. 
The end here is still life. Custom provides 
For the eyes first. They feast. Their feast invites 
Thirst and delighted hunger. All are satisfied.