Heartburst

Steve Jobs

               Thick-skinned pomegranates, your rinds

               forced open by a rashness of seeds, you've led

               me to envisage the highest foreheads

               bursting with all that comes to mind.

               Should all these suns you suffer,

               O pomegranates with gaping sides,

               leave you so swollen with pride

               as to break down your ruby buffers,

               should the wizened gold of your skin

               give way to pressure from within

               and explode in red juice-gems,

               that light-shedding fracture

               might bring a soul such as I had to dream

               of its own hidden architecture.

Paul Muldoon

Moy Sand and Gravel

  Paul Valéry: Pomegranates

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002©

i  Rodrigo Calazans

ii Benjamin Eidem