The Sassoon Collection: iv. Butter and Eggs
The Sassoon Collection
iv. Butter and eggs
Robust diners, deftly forking in the fat.
O no longer living triglycerides against the heedless tongue
Of buffet and banquet days, what sends them gliding through
This set of dancing teeth?
Theirs are the hungry cadences between
The enraptured chewing of hefty humans that make
Heaven in the booth while second helpings simmer;
And theirs the faintest whispers that hush the desire.
And they are as a released soul that wings its way
Out of the starlit dimness above the moon
And they are the largest beings — born
To know but this, the phantom glare of fullness.
— Zumwalt (2011)
Copyright © 2011
For the entire set, please visit: https://zumpoems.com/2012/02/29/the-sassoon-collection/
Admin’s note: In this fourth of a series of poems based on Siegfried Sassoon’s works, Zumalt leverages the common overindulgences of eating as a metaphor for modern consumerism to make the point about how consumer culture tricks the individual into mistaking material accumulation and endless appetite for a transcendent, heavenly state always out of reach — satisfaction is but an elusive phantom.
