Appetite Poem by gershon hepner

“Give me excess of it, ” he said,
“my appetite won’t die or sicken,
it grows, like loaves of rising bread
that rise with yeast that makes it quicken.
Excess delights, and is the leaven
that gives the appetite the urge
to turn aside from earth to heaven,
which comes not from a chilly church,
but from desire without bounds
that knows no reason for restraint.”
The poor man hardly heard these sounds,
for hunger made him feel too faint;
excess, indeed, may be most pleasant
but only if you’re prince, not peasant.

Linda brought me this poem this morning (June 5,2008) together with a bunch of others I had not seen for over ten years. The amazing coincidence is that when she brought them to me I was studying these lines from the last book of Milton’s Paradise Lost, just before lines 624-6 which Kingsley Amis used to recite when he had a hangover:

But is there yet no other way, besides
These painful passages, how we may come
To Death, and mix with our connatural dust?
There is, said Michael, if thou well observe
The rule of not too much, by temperance taught
In what thou eatst and drinkst, seeking from thence
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Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight,
Till many years over thy head return:
So maist thou live, till like ripe Fruit thou drop
Into thy Mothers lap, or be with ease
Gatherd, not harshly pluckt, for death mature:
This is old age; but then thou must outlive
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
To witherd weak & gray; thy Senses then
Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgoe,
To what thou hast, and for the Aire of youth
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Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reigne
A melancholly damp of cold and dry
To waigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The Balme of Life.


4/21/97,5/17/98,6/5/08