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The Fatal Fruit



An ancient fruit, pomegranate is mentioned in Europe as early as the Iron-Age, 

Greek Mythology in the Homeric hymns. Yet, it has still to reach mainstream prominence as a consumer fruit in commercial markets of North America and the Western Hemisphere.

Iran hosts a great genetic diversity of pomegranate and more than 760 Iranian
genotypes are collected at Iranian national pomegranate collection in Yazd, Iran.


The myth of Persephone- ...Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken off to live in the underworld as his wife. Her mother, Demeter (goddess of the Harvest), went into mourning for her lost daughter and thus all green things ceased to grow. Zeus, the highest ranking of the Greek gods, could not allow the Earth to die, so he commanded Hades to return Persephone. It was the rule of the Fates that anyone who consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Persephone had no food, but Hades tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds while she was still his prisoner and so, because of this, she was condemned to spend six months in the Underworld every year. During these six months, when Persephone is sitting on the throne of the Underworld next to her husband Hades, her mother Demeter mourns and no longer gives fertility to the earth. This became an ancient Greek explanation for the seasons. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting Persephona depicts Persephone holding the fatal fruit.

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The fatal fruit of myth seems familiar, its hellish yarn feels commonplace resting near my slick and groaning limbs, and the underworld thrums its shears like lust and greed trimming misery. Out of its four-sided narrowness arises bright red blooms and berries ready for my taste of a banished infancy, seeds breathing inside a furious mourning on their way to rescue man’s daughters.

Winter’s rainfall, its icy maw made wide, exposes the apple of Grenada to casualty. Oh! I shall heave the fated harvest skyward, eager to return it to a land of peace…

© 2010 by mark prime

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