I don’t know which part of the tale I like
best: the one where a beggar comes every day
to offer a piece of fruit to the king
as he sits in his private quarters,
which then he lobs without thinking
into his treasure house; or the part
where a monkey bites into one of these
daily offerings to reveal the surprising
jewel at its center. I wonder about
the room into which these gifts have been
so carelessly thrown— and why no one has come
to clean and bag the garbage these many months.
So now, amid sour-sweet clouds of ammonia
from rotting fruit: a pile of precious stones.
The story doesn’t say what one should do
with them: only that they’re mere preamble
to more difficult tests. For instance,
at the height of summer, how is it not
possible to pick up a peach or fig or plum
and hold its ripe intoxication, at least,
under your nose? How long will it take
before you set down the dead weight
you’ve carried so long, before it
exhausts and destroys you? I imagine
the monkey coming at twilight, drawn back
by the musk of mango, the yeasty headiness
of durian; and a man so absorbed in his
own overripe sorrows he can’t lift his head,
cut an orange into sections, lay a cool
wheel of melon on his fevered tongue.