Poem
John Stammers
I DON’T ‘GO ORGANIC’ OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO
I DON’T ‘GO ORGANIC’ OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO
I DON’T ‘GO ORGANIC’ OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO
I don’t ‘go organic’ often, but when I docash registers explode, shop assistants lurch back
beneath furry earflaps,
the wild beasts knitted on Iroquois sweaters
leap up,
their hunters let fall their bows,
returning, at all fleet, to tented encampments of their tribe
to sit wordlessly
with the Great Spirit.
Cram up my basket, I say, for I am not all water -
though hydration may form the signal part
of any halfway harmonious regime.
I am told that amaranth binds a higher protein content
than the equivalent weight
of any goodly-made walrus.
Pass me that cantaloupe, farmed in biotic growing methods
by organo-wonks with expensive recreational habits.
I wish to pay
largely for it, if you would be so kind,
and desire
little change from a high denomination banknote.
Only stay, stay your hand there on its surface
to let my own against the edge of yours, tender, as in a slow wooing.
Fresh we were and wild,
O yes wild, I say, were we,
implacable huntress of the free-range legume.
And what does it come to in any sort of natural currency?
A single meal for two, free of human taint,
the feel of cool, green skin beneath your palm touched along mine,
and a further difficulty - I see that, scourge of the brassicas -
I do not always know what I am doing.
© 2005, John Stammers
From: Stolen Love Behaviour
Publisher: Picador,
From: Stolen Love Behaviour
Publisher: Picador,
John Stammers
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1954)
John Stammers was born in London in 1954. His first collection Panoramic Lounge-bar (Picador, 2001) won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2001, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award 2001, and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. A second collection Stolen Love Behaviour (Picador, 2005) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. It was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2005, and ...
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Poems of John Stammers
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I DON’T ‘GO ORGANIC’ OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO
I don’t ‘go organic’ often, but when I docash registers explode, shop assistants lurch back
beneath furry earflaps,
the wild beasts knitted on Iroquois sweaters
leap up,
their hunters let fall their bows,
returning, at all fleet, to tented encampments of their tribe
to sit wordlessly
with the Great Spirit.
Cram up my basket, I say, for I am not all water -
though hydration may form the signal part
of any halfway harmonious regime.
I am told that amaranth binds a higher protein content
than the equivalent weight
of any goodly-made walrus.
Pass me that cantaloupe, farmed in biotic growing methods
by organo-wonks with expensive recreational habits.
I wish to pay
largely for it, if you would be so kind,
and desire
little change from a high denomination banknote.
Only stay, stay your hand there on its surface
to let my own against the edge of yours, tender, as in a slow wooing.
Fresh we were and wild,
O yes wild, I say, were we,
implacable huntress of the free-range legume.
And what does it come to in any sort of natural currency?
A single meal for two, free of human taint,
the feel of cool, green skin beneath your palm touched along mine,
and a further difficulty - I see that, scourge of the brassicas -
I do not always know what I am doing.
From: Stolen Love Behaviour
I DON’T ‘GO ORGANIC’ OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO
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