Ode to a tomato
I suffer through the winter with Tatjana wanting the crappy tomatoes that are imported from god knows where and I saw like a mantra – wait till summer, wait till it is tomato season. But this year despite the tomato bush reaching maturity, despite the tomatoes fat on the vine, all of them died an early death.
In the grocery store every tomato we bought sucked. In the green market, the tomatoes sucked.
In Nantucket this weekend, the waiter said the tomatoes have sucked. Everybody except one woman I know in Virginia has had a horrible tomato year. The Nantucket waiter called it the blithe but he was only mispronouncing blight (I think). There is a blight that is ruining the tomatoes left and right.
So sad, summer is over, not a decent tomato in sight (sigh).
August 31st, 2009 at 12:14 pm
neruda wrote an ode to tomatoes. and btw-the heirlooms were delicious these past two weeks.
Ode To Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda
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,
onto 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 color
and cool completeness.