“Night and the rivers sang a chthonic love,
Destroyer of cities and of daylight order,
But seemed to them weak argument for death.
The apple tree that cannot measure time
Might taste the apple yet not be condemned:
They, to enjoy it, must renounce the world.”
W. H. Auden, from “Kairos and Logos”
Except we can of course measure time with an apple tree: from sere to blossom to fruit to fall. Or is it the fall where we begin, with apples? I can never quite remember.
