Tuesday 5 January 2021, in the Vaucluse

Sun this morning and snow and fog and the hills to the south layered like a Japanese or Chinese landscape. Hard to catch, but here is a view out the window, and a corner of my attic workspace, the vantage point for my poem ‘Winter Pears’ from my 2018 book The Hotel Eden.

Winter Pears

On the road that descends into La Roque,

After the picnic table

And high-perched cemetery, a pear tree gnarls

Up from a farmyard, hoarding its pears.

A sin to let these fat pears go to waste,

This abundance my fingers ache to pick

(Rotting fruit already litters the ground):

I knock at the farmhouse and ask,

Do they belong to the pears and may we pick some?

But the woman drying her hands on a tea towel

Smiles no, not her pears,

They belong – she points farther down –

The house we stopped at yesterday to read

The handwritten warning tacked to the gate

mon chien court les 200m en 10 secondes

si tu cours moins vite

restes au portail et sonnes!

my dog covers 200m in 10 seconds

if you don’t run that fast

stay at the gate and ring!

We ring, the dog comes belting,

I snatch my hand back

And wait for the lady of the house

In plaid felt slippers

Who is just fine with us picking some pears.

Don’t you eat them? I ask.

A few, she hedges,

Adding, They’re winter pears, they’re hard,

Good only for cooking.

This morning, breakfast done, I lift the pears

From the top of the fridge, and I sort them –

The unblemished

And the windfalls. I take the black-handled,

Paper-thin knife that has been in the kitchen

For maybe a hundred years

The knife that brings to my mind

The black-handled knives that Chardin

Places slantwise across his surfaces,

Utensils

That give his paintings their illusion of depth;

And I carve out the bruises, the fine-bore

Tunnels of worms.

I slice the fruit thinly, until the white flesh

Is almost translucent,

I arrange the slices in the new pot from Ikea

(I burned the old one),

Add a trickle of water

And leave them to simmer.

Beverley Bie Brahic