Fruit Market of Life
by Amreen Kaur Saini, St Peter’s College
Years 7 – 8 Ekphrastic Poetry Finalist
‘A Banquet Still Life’ by Jan Davidsz de Heem (circa 1640–41).
Look closely.
Not at the fruit,
but at the hands
that are no longer there.
Someone placed these things here.
Someone lifted the silver.
Someone poured the wine.
Someone broke the bread
and believed, for a moment,
that there would be another moment.
That is the tragedy of the table:
it remembers and keeps
what the people cannot.
The grapes still carry the summer taste
of a year no one remembers.
The peaches keep the warmth
of our beloved sun that has already set.
The flowers bloom
without knowing the person who once admired them
is gone.
How strange that the world does not stop
when we do.
The fruit does not mourn.
The river beyond the columns
does not slow like us.
The clouds do not search the earth
for the names of the dead. . . Like us.
And still,
we gather things.
Gold.
Silver.
Wine.
Music.
Bread.
As though this beauty could persuade time
to leave us alone for once.
As though filling a table
could keep an empty chair
from becoming inevitable.
The harp lies silent.
Perhaps once
someone touched its strings
and filled this room with a sound and music
they thought it would last forever.
But music is the most brutal proof
of our mortality:
it exists
only while it is disappearing.
One note is born
only to become silent.
How did writing this poem make you feel?
It honestly made me feel overwhelmed and how people think that they can buy happiness with money and that the world is in their hands. Imagine the Great White Shark in the ocean on the left and a human on the right. The creature on the right is the most dangerous living thing on Earth. I said the right, not the left and definitely not the shark. That is how I felt.
Which single line in your poem are you the absolute proudest of?
‘How strange that the world does not stop
when we do’. I’m proud of this line because I captured a big, universal feeling in just a few simple words. I like that it leaves room for people to find their own meaning in it.
Describe your poem in three words
Mortality, memory, impermanence.
Where is your absolute favourite place to sit when you are brainstorming ideas?
Honestly, sometimes my ideas just randomly pop up in the middle of the night. But I don’t brainstorm—I listen to my heart and that little voice in my head, and I let the ideas come to me.
What skills do you think you strengthened through writing this poem?
I am an author and artist as well, so writing this poem was just like delving deep into the artwork and think how the artist thought as he made this piece.
Why do you think people write poetry?
People write poetry not just to publish it or have people read it. Poets want to teach and delve into the wonders of the world. As a writer, I would say a writer is a world trapped in a person. For poets, they love to share their view of the world with others, the good side and the bad side.