Poetry |

“Wild Mother Apples of Tian Shan”

Wild Mother Apples of Tian Shan

 

1.

It’s hard to know which story to tell

but easier now to guess

which story will tell us

 

Once apples were forbidden fruit because

the Latin nouns malum/malum were written

the same, but one meant evil

the other apple: life/oblivion

 

Now everything is hot ocean

rising among the breathless, tear gas

and virus shivering above

the gorged and starving

 

2.

Nikolai Vavilov’s family knew the gaunt aunt

of famine. He grew consumed with seeds

and craving, peeled away

in delicate curls their genetic passions

 

He found the ancient mother of apples

in Tian Shan, in Kazakhstan: honey-! hazelnut-!

and licorice-flavored apples

amid hoary spruce and wild bear —

it was worth his life

 

to collect and save their seeds,

these food-of-the-dead and living

birthers of heroes and sagas

 

He built in Leningrad a great collection

guarded during the war, never breached

though nine died of starvation keeping watch

 

3.

We know so little yet

even the checkered beetle and common moth

witness and unraise what we have wrought.

Our atoms, our concrete vaults dissolve

with the settling of fog

in a hemlock-scented night

 

Morning arrives and tadpoles wriggle free

from their jelly; salmon rise to swallow

the wisdom of the world. We will learn,

who choose no other course

 

The Nazis distrusted Nikolai’s

aptitude for following, bearlike, the call

of the untamed mothers of apples —

so they starved him to death in prison

 

His shade and others pour spirit

libations in the weeds for all of us

while apples grow wilder in Tian Shan

and blue ghost fireflies settle low

in the hollows of these mountains

 

*     *     *

 

Nikolai Vavolov (1887-1943) was a Russian botanist and geneticist who studied genetic erosion, and believed crop diversity was essential to life on earth. He created the world’s largest collection of plant seeds, and helped preserve and protect them through the 28-month long siege of Leningrad. Vavilov’s expeditions for plant and seed collection covered more than 50 countries. In the wild forests of Tian Shan, Kazakhstan, Malus sieversii — the genetic “mother” apples of most of the fruit we eat today — still grow.

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