Apple Poem by gershon hepner

I


Keep me in your sight
for I am cast in gold;
the ignorant come with a bite
that’s like a stranglehold.

II

An apple filled with spices:
silver with a golden coat.
Did this one cause our vices,
or ruby reds that gloat?

I asked it: Tell me why
You are not like the others? It
Replied: I fear to die
between an ass's boorish bit.

Inspired by a poem by Shmu’el Hanagd (993-1056) , translated by Peter Cole in The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poems from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492 (p.44) :

I
I, when you notice,
am cast in gold:
the bite of the ignorant
frightens me.

II

An apple filled with spice:
silver coated with gold.
And others that grow in the orchard,
beside it, bright as rubies.

I asked it: Why aren’t you like those?
Soft, with your skin exposed?
And it answered in silence: Because
boors and fools have jaws.

10/26/07