This Is Just to Say

If only the contrite husband, before heading out the door, had scarfed an apple, with its Old Testament symbolism suggesting the grand drama of the deep-seated itch of temptation, and the sad and inevitable urge to gratification that defines humanity’s postlapsarian state; or maybe grapes, which writers of Antiquity equated with bacchanalian indulgence; or, if you read Aesop, the symbol of humanity’s immemorial greed for things just out of reach. But plums?

The plums of course never actually appear in the poem. When the poem begins, the plums are already a memory, cased in the cold past tense “were” (Line 3). Certainly, the sweet and delicious fruit in the icebox has been freighted with extravagant readings by earnest readers of the poem—the plums are symbols of deep temptation, the brutal logic of selfishness, the gratification of the appetites at the expense of others—but these elaborate readings reveal more about the individual readers than about Williams’s fragile, spare poem. The plums then symbolize the invitation to do such elaborate reaching-into a poem but only, the poem cautions, with delicacy, respecting the premise of the text itself. Have at it, the poet encourages, but then when it comes time to set aside the poem, look into your own icebox, and find there strewn about carelessly, haphazardly objects—low fat milk, eggs, bottled water, cottage cheese—that can be similarly illuminated into suggestion, everyday objects never elevated into poetic lines, but nevertheless there for your delectation.