Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.
White peach
White peach - Lawrence Sail
White peach
Under the skin,
itself rose soft
but tough, bitter,
the flesh, firm
yet tender
to the knife,
dense with sugars
but tough, bitter,
the flesh, firm
yet tender
to the knife,
dense with sugars
The flesh, white
not yellow,
white at the border
of green, the colour
of iceberg roses,
with the pallor of illness
at its most alluring
Long before
you reach the stone-heart
with its hard ridges,
you will be up
to your elbows
in runnels of juice,
your fingers dripping
And memory, turned
informer, will tell
that you know already
this bitter-sweetness
you fear and desire –
the linger of it
on your drenched lips
from Eye-Baby (Bloodaxe, 2006), © Lawrence Sail 2006, used by permission of the author and the publisher