It was when he leant close to me,
his little naked torso, brown and thin,
reaching an arm into the cage
of raspberries, that I snatched a kiss.
The raspberries smelled of rosemary
and among them grew the odd sweetpea.
Do you know why they're called sweetpeas?
Mowgli asked - No, I said, why?
Because look, he said, fingering
a thin pale pod, this is the fruit
and this is the flower and inside the pod
are peas. Mowgli looked inside things.
Inside the sieve, a baby spider
trailing a thread his finger trailed
up, over, under the mounting pile
he prodded. Inside the fruit, the seed.
Don't pick the ones with the white bits,
Mowgli ordered, they taste horrid.
Sun tangled in the row of canes,
cobwebs blurred the berries. Mowgli
progressed to the apples - small
bitter windfalls. I'm going to test them,
he said, for smashes. And again,
I'm going to test them for bruises. Mowgli
throwing apples against the wall,
missing the wall, high up in the air;
Mowgli squatting, examining
for the smallest hint of decay
and chucking them if they failed the test,
healthy raspberries; Mowgli
balancing on a rake, first thing
in the morning, grinning shyly.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem