HILARY ELFICK

Quinces 

 

Slicing quinces for soup on the heavy kauri table
you choose the huge tapered knife.
I take the peeler, struggling with the hard skin
pocked with moles. ‘Chop them small’
you order. ‘They're juicy but very tough.
If I made a butter who would eat it?’

The adamantine flesh browns in moments
before we take it, heaped in pots, to the fire.
Another sliced off memory to drop into the bowl,
your Hungarian soup of ’45, and the oysters
we tore from their shells last Spring.

Rain streams down the windows,
bounces off fern trees and persimmons,
hopping on the deck with scalded toes.

Roxana-Monica Mîndrican

Hilary Elfick
 

Gutui

Taind gutui pentru supa pe masa solida de kauri*
alegi acel urias cutit ascutit.
Iau cutitul de cojit si incerc sa desfac invelisul dur
plin de alunite.* „Taie-le marunt”
imi spui. Sunt zemoase, dat foarte tari.
Daca as face unt cine l-ar manca?

Carnea lor imaculata se inegreste intr-o clipa
inaite sa o luam si ingramadita in oale s-o punem pe foc.
Alta amintire tocata aruncata in bol,
supa ta ungureasca din 45 si stridiile
pe care le-am smuls din cochilii primavara trecuta.

Ploaia se prelinge pe geamuri
Sare din arborii de feriga si din curmali,
Topaind pe punte cu talpile-i oparite.

*Kauri is a relatively small genus of 21 species of evergreen trees in the very ancient Araucariaceae family of conifers. While initially widespread during the Jurassic period they are now found only in small areas of the southern hemisphere. The trees have characteristically very large trunks and little or no branching for some way up. Young trees are normally conical in shape; only upon maturity does the crown become more rounded or irregularly shaped.

*“moles”(alunite)- we have a personification of a fruit which acquires human features.