The Fruit

Jeffrey Burghauser

A Teacher Prays Before Class

Like anything He’s challenged to exist,
This piece of Time, in its baroque
Uniqueness, bears the mark of being kissed
Well-wishingly. The figured oak
Involved with deep, exquisite patterns should be formed
Into the most exquisite lute.
Enable me
To hail the He
Whose love involves the Fragrance with the Fruit.

Accordingly, let’s make the most of it.
Let’s use it. Not as Herrick or
Marvell proposed, as frat boys boast of it.
Nor let us seek to use it more
“Efficiently”—as if we took direction from
Some monster in a business suit
Who oozes wrath,
Demanding math
To show the Fragrance worthy of the Fruit.

The Teacher and his Students: may we trust
Each other, safe inside that dear
Conveyance that the other’s language must
(Quite irrespective of the sphere
Of knowledge subject to cooperative regard)
Be understood to constitute.
Accord us love
As, from above,
Your Will accords the Fragrance to the Fruit.

In nearly every human place but this,
A civil war seems probable.
And anything withstanding the Abyss
(Warm, delicate) is mob-able.
Equipped with pricy math & inexpensive guns,
They somehow manage to dispute
The presence of
What we can prove
Associates the Fragrance to the Fruit.

I know I’m born to die. I think I know
What “I”, and “know”, and “born”, and “die”
Might mean. Not really knowing where I row,
I row. The night is cold. May I
Impart some teachings that outlast me longer than
The silver sound outlasts the flute;
The earnest heat,
The obsolete
Electric bulb; the Fragrance, the Fruit.

I know I’m born to die. And so are they.
As we all die together, Lord,
And find ourselves in fellowship today
With books amassed upon the board,
Let us be full of prayer as we pursue the Truth—
As we pursue the backward route
(Through Love & Hate,
Through Volume, Weight,
And Music) from the Fragrance to the Fruit.

Jeffrey Burghauser
Poet & Teacher

Jeffrey is a teacher in Central Ohio. Educated in the United States and England, his poems and translations have appeared in The Agonist, Appalachian Journal, The Asses of Parnassus, Iceview, Lehrhaus, Montana Mouthful, New English Review (where he’s a regular contributor), Quadrant, and The Showbear Family Circus. He is the author of Real Poems (2019), Still Telling What is Told (2020), and Understandings (2021).

Photography by Margarita Zueva