Pomology of the Fallen
by Sienna Vrieze, Methodist Ladies’ College (MLC)
Years 11 – 12 Written Poetry Finalist
Before the binary of damnation, she was only abundance…
a red grammar swelling beneath green tongues.
Pulp and perfume;
Sugar thickening in the light.
Then came the myth.
A hand entered the orchard carrying taxonomy,
and every fruit thereafter was burdened with allegory.
They called her apple.
Called her temptation.
Called her the first soft thing to decay.
The trees learned shame in blossom.
Beneath their canopies, the bindweed arrived
white-throated, immaculate,
its roots threading scripture reverently.
It climbed by clasping.
Every embrace became a girdle.
The trunks, slowly constricted,
grew rings around the violence,
burying each season beneath another.
The fruit reddened anyway.
Inside each globe, cells loosened,
starch surrendering into sweetness,
the chemistry of ripening mistaken for corruption.
A bruise spread like dusk.
The orchard named it feminine.
And when the apples softened,
when their skins gave way to wasps and weather,
the vines raised themselves higher,
green and blameless in their invasiveness.
No one indicted the creeper.
No one saw the way it drank the light,
or how its tendrils entered every fork of bark
until the trees flowered in strangulation.
Instead, they gathered the fallen fruit.
They held each split apple to the sun
and called its browning flesh evidence…
see how quickly sweetness spoils,
see how rot is latent in every womb of sugar.
By autumn the ground was fragrant with collapse.
The apples sank inward,
their white flesh oxidising to sepia,
their skins opening… old mouths.
Yet beneath this apparent ruin
the seeds hardened.
A black arithmetic of survival.
For decomposition is only the body
translating itself into soil.
And the orchard, centuries from now,
will still be haunted by that first accusation:
that a fruit, merely by ripening,
invented the Fall.
How did writing this poem make you feel?
This poem for me was a synthesis of sociological/philosophical studies I’ve analysed by choice when I created my fictional piece in my 1/2 VCE Literature class. I wanted to analyse the boundaries, thresholds and engrained effects of the Patriarchy, The Church, the Feminist Movement, Abrahamic Religions (e.g. Adam and Eve) and innate/learned biological responses to these systems- questioning whether mankind truly is the result of nature or nurture and to what extent are these behavioural systems corrupt and/or intrinsically intertwined? I looked into Foucalt’s contention that human behaviour is a result of Panopticism, how the Maleus Maleficarum laid a foundation for those in such extreme shared support of both the Patriarchy and The Church, proper religious reverence is lost and many other case studies by universities and research institutes globally.
Which single line in your poem are you the absolute proudest of?
‘See how rot is latent in every womb of sugar.’
Describe your poem in three words
Feminist, polysemous, theological.
Where is your absolute favourite place to sit when you are brainstorming ideas?
On the train home from school, because as I browse through social media and news sites, recurring topics will often spark creative momentum in my head, amalgamating these concepts until I can only explore my idea through poetry.
Why do you think people write poetry?
I think people write poetry because it is one of the few pure forms of human expression- in my opinion alongside the fine arts and dramatic arts, that encapsulate the human experience without the full connotation of intonation, inflection and nuanced meaning speeches and casual conversation can hold. I believe that these forms of expression are of the soul rather than the conscious brain, as when I write, read and watch these forms of media, it is not my academic brain absorbing these materials… it feels emotive, provocative and striking rather than analytical- it transcends any other expression of self.