* * *
My younger son and I sat waiting for a table in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. Having experienced the elation of a USC Trojan victory in football over Stanford, we were mellow, and hungry. I sipped a beer, and Tony, always abstemious, nursed a Perrier. In the camaraderie of father and son out for a fling, I looped my arm in his. He recoiled. “Not in San Francisco, Pop,” he said.
* * *
In Greece, shortly after the birth of our grandson, Norma and I translated each experience into terms of Christopher Ross. We perceived him mainly as Apollo, that beautiful, reasonable god. Yet we realized that dialectically Apollo needed Dionysus: no Dionysus, no Apollo. If any word characterizes Greek thought and religion, it is “balance.”
We hope to take Christopher Ross to Greece someday, so that he can sit in the shadow of the Parthenon and stroll the Agora. He will experience the holy island of Delos and the holy city of Delphi. And he will learn that once there were brother gods named Apollo and Dionysus. They live now only among the ruins of their ancient homeland.
Through our land prowls a strange new god who doesn’t smile benignly like Apollo or roguishly like Dionysus, a rough deity who grins lewdly, malevolently.
II. Poems
Vegetables
Roots
Parsnip
Ah, parsnip, pallid winter root,
Thou emblem, yes, thou very fruit
Of fallow fields and frozen ways,
I alone will sing thy praise
Before I whack thee quite in two
And add thee to this evening’s stew.
Oh, vegetable melancholic,
When people dine and drink and frolic,
Thou liest in the basement bin,
A beetle bumbling blind therein.
Thou suffer’st yet the vilest taunts:
You’re never served in restaurants.
Carrot
At one time, they were plump and stubby,
Not esthetic, far too chubby;
Often gnarled, but always sapid,
Carrots then were never vapid.
Those sunny roots were full of savor,
Sweet and juicy, earthy flavor.
Carrots now are well designed,
Slim and tapered, quite refined,
But wooden, dry: they have no taste—
For symmetry, gad, what a waste!
Slice it, dice it, scrub it, pare it:
We mourn the passing of the carrot.
Beet
In Moscow:
The blood-red beet, da, khorosho,
We use him for our borshcht, you know.
In other lands, tovarishch beet
Is not considered quite so neat.
In the suburbs:
At cocktail party, barbecue,
I’ve never seen raw beets, have you?
Turnip, carrot, cabbage slice
Dunked in dip is very nice.
Yet palates can by beets be tickled.
Like me, they’re at their best when pickled.
In Cambridge:
From Harvard, graduate cum laude,
Served usually with quohog chowder,
The beet has been an honored guest
With Kissinger and all the rest
At solemn rites when Derek Bok
Asks famous grads to give a talk.
Radish
Listen, you can hear the crunch.
I eat a radish with my lunch.
The radish, wisest of the roots,
Is never cooked and only suits
A relish dish, not a platter,
Or plate or tureen, for that matter.
Imagine radish casserole,
Baked radish in a Pyrex bowl,
Or think of radish under glass,
A humble root gone upper class.
The radish knows it’s best by far
To love ourselves just as we are.
Rutabaga
Forgotten, lost to our cuisine,
Of noble turnip, first cousine,
For rutabaga, royal root,
Strike up the timbrel and the flute.
That she at table proud may reign,
From exile bring her back again.
Ma grandmere served her every week,
With mustard greens and ham and leek.
Rutabagas are, mon dieu!
At least as tasty as les choux.
Jicama
Like the radish, it has crunch,
But if you eat it with your lunch,
You’ll find that it has little flavor,
No zip, no oomph, no snappy savor.
Overweight? The thing to do
Is dine on jicama with tofu.
Because that’s such a tasteless mess,
You’ll lose weight through eating less.
Tubers
Potato
(To be read with a thick German accent.)
At dinner, he is always gut,
Mit Sauerbraten, hardy root,
A glass of Bier, a glass of Wein,
Kartoffel, ja, you’re immer fein.
Vegetable democratisch,
Not a snob or autocratisch,
The rich, the poor, the bourgeoisie
At table gladly welcome thee.
Heil to thee, blithe tuber, spud,
Who comes to us from out the mud.
And now at the Oktoberfest,
Salute the root that we like best.
We raise our mugs in heartfelt toast.
For Kartoffel, shout a “Prost!”
Sweet Potato
The sweet potato, unlike yam,
Is very seldom served with ham.
In fact, it’s barely fit to eat;
It’s mealy and not really sweet.
When we find it’s