To the Poets, to Make Much of Cheese
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
—G.K. Chesterton
Too much on love and nature! Way too much on growing old.
With luck you’ll get an apple in a poem (it’s a symbol).
It comes with subtext, though, not cheddar thinly sliced.
“A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and…” What? No wheel
Of Camembert? Just thou? Omar Khayyam, I’d dine out single,
Solo, sooner than I’d skip the soft cheese course.
When poetry falls flat, blame the professors! Fair? Of course.
Faculty meeting Colby’s sweaty, cubed and past-it-old.
They serve pimento dip at meetings—or worse! Kraft Singles…
What could the MFA crowd know? Their cheeses are sad symbols
Of parsimony on the part of churlish deans. So us, we’ll
Leave them to their curdled tenure. Now take any slice
Of Dante. An Italian! On every page a wedge or slice
Of Asiago, a smear of Mascarpone! With him we course
infernal rivers of molten mozzarella, roll three-foot wheels
Of God’s own Reggiano—sixteen months old—
To crush the gluttons down in circle three. A symbol?
Yes! Except it isn’t there. Abandon all hope of cheese in Dante. A single
Reference? Not a chance. And Milton, who “single
hast maintained the cause of truth”? No slice,
No spread. And he had Shropshire Blue! What better symbol
For the white of innocence mottled up with sin, the course
Of Adam’s curse in slow decay. For epic cheese you must go old—
Not an aged Gouda (but think of that!). No, turn the wheel
(Of time, not cheese) to ancient Greece. Manouri in a whey-soft wheel!
When Hecamede, in Homer’s Iliad, stood captive, helpless, single,
And alone, she looked at her captor, Nestor, saw he was frail and old,
And stopped before she served his Pramnian wine. “A slice
Of goat milk’s cheese grated in your drink—of course!
That’s what you need.” It worked! A nibble, not a symbol,
Thank you very much. No good to nose or tongue, a symbol.
Menelaus knew it and tried to tell Telemachus. “A wheel
Upon the highway, a sail upon the sea—set your course
To Libya, where lambs have horns at birth, and every single
Household—master’s or man’s—has cheese a-plenty. Slice
Into it! Seize the cheese! Get it while you’re young—but when it’s old.”
Of course so much depends on the symbol
Of the prelapsarian-old cheese, the red wheel
Of Eden’s Edam, but all I want’s a single literal, slice.