The ruby red of pomegranates

Put together a lemony garlicky still-warm chicken salad with a handful of rocket (arugula), coriander (cilantro), toasted cashews and spring onions (scallions). Too hot a summer’s evening for anything  more filling. Elsewhere, people were stabbing the haggis and  ploughing through  mounds of neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes)  in honour of Rabbie Burns’  birthday, a tradition observed by  my Scottish relatives and  parents’ friends in Zimbabwe and  Zambia all through my  childhood. We were taught to recite Tam O’Shanter and Holy Wullie’s Prayer in a parody of broad Scotch, dressed in knee-length tartan skirts and  carelessly ironed white blouses, standing up nice and straight with  shoulders back while  the adults slouched around, mooching and yawning while drinking imported  whisky.  Those verses  must have sounded  downright peculiar from the mouth of a six-year-old girl.

 

O Lord, Thou kens what zeal I bear,
When drinkers drink, an’ swearers swear,
An’ singing here, an’ dancin there,
Wi’ great and sma’;
For I am keepit by Thy fear
Free frae them a’.

But yet, O Lord! confess I must,
At times I’m fash’d wi’ fleshly lust:
An’ sometimes, too, in worldly trust,
Vile self gets in;
But Thou remembers we are dust,
Defil’d wi’ sin.

 

Ah yes, fleshly lust indeed. I once went out with a man who gave his penis the name of Pooter. He would bounce into bed naked and shout: ‘Say hello to Pooter!’  Which was amusing and  even endearing the first  five or six times, not so much after that. I  don’t know  many  women who have coy or frivolous  nicknames for their private parts or who complain about waxing their legs or tweezering hairs in  twitchy places, but there is a male tradition of  joky euphemisms and via Andrew Sullivan here I came across   the funniest comments I have  ever read  by men who applied Veet Hair Removal Gel Creme to their genitals, AKA the ‘gentleman’s log cabin’ or ‘meat and two veg’.  Spare a thought for all the strong silent women ripping hot wax off their girlish  mossy dells.

 

Out in the  back garden, ruby pomegranates are ripening  along with white Genoa figs. A branch of persimmons leans over the  garden wall, heavy and flame-coloured. Time for another poem, discussed here.

Pomegranates
It rained last night. The pomegranates,
Red and orange-red,
Have all burst open into flower.

Not to be comforted,
I sit in this cool pavilion
Set in a lotus lake
And under its glass-bead curtains wait
For my closed heart to break.
Sin Hum (1566-1628)
Translated by Graeme Wilson (1972)

 

 

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