An Orange in Mérida

By Ben Belitt 1911–2003 Ben Belitt

The orange-peelers of Mérida, in the wrought-

iron midday, come with mechanical skewers

and live oranges, to straddle the paths

on caissons of bicycle wheels

and work in the dark of the plaza, like jewelers’ cloths.

The orange is ceremonious. Its sleep

is Egyptian. Its golden umbilicus

waits in pyramidal light, swath over swath, outwitting

the Caesars. It cannot be ravaged by knives,

but clasps its mortality in, like the skein of an asp.

The bandstand glitters like bone, in laurel

and spittle. Behind their triangular

catafalques, the orange-peelers move through the thirst

of the world with Rameses’ bounty

caulked into the hive of the peel

while ratchets and wheels spin a blazing

cosmology on their little machines. Under

skewers and handles, the orange’s skin

is pierced, the orange, in chain-mail and papyrus,

unwinds the graveclothes of Pharaoh

in a helix of ribbon, unflawed, from the navel’s

knot to the rind and the pulp underneath, like a butterfly’s

chrysalis. And sleeper by sleeper, the living turn with their thirst

to each other, the orange’s pith is broken

in a blind effervescence that perfumes the palate and burns

to the tooth’s bite.

And the dead reawaken.

Source: This Scribe, My Hand: The Complete Poems of Ben Belitt (Louisiana State University Press, 1998)

Biography

Poet, translator, and professor Ben Belitt was born in New York City in 1911. He earned degrees from the University of Virginia and taught for many years at Bennington College in Vermont. Sometimes described as one of the neglected masters of 20th century American poetry, Belitt taught and influenced poets such as Susan Wheeler, Reginald Shepherd, and Lynn Emanuel while at Bennington. Susan Wheeler has described Belitt’s . . .

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