Artichoke
… —from: Elemental Odes
The artichoke
of delicate heart
erect
in its battle-dress, builds
its minimal cupola
keeps
stark
in its scallop of
scales.
Around it
demoniac vegetables
bristle their thicknesses,
devise tendrils and belfries,
the bulb’s agitations;
while under the subsoil
the carrot
sleeps sound in its
rusty mustaches.
Runner and filaments
bleach in the vineyards,
whereupon rise the vines.
The sedulous cabbage
arranges
its petticoats;
oregano
sweetens a world;
and the artichoke
dulcetly there in the gardenplot,
armed for a skirmish,
goes proud
in its pomegranate
burnishes.
Pablo Neruda
from Five Decades: Poems 1925-1970
translation: Ben Bellitt
Grove Press, 1974