What's in your basket?

I happened to come across a very wonderful blast from the past this week, when I stumbled upon Michael Mackmin, in a supermarket. When I remarked on the pomegranates in his basket he was able to relate their literary significance:


Proserpina was the daughter of Demeter and was, while picking flowers
in Sicily, carried off to Hades by Dis (king thereof).
As a child I liked the picture of this, for some obscure to me, then,
reason, in the Children's Encyclopaedia - possibly not unrelated to the
swish of thin robes, bare toes etc. Dis knew that he'd only get to
keep her there if he could make her eat. In the end, just before she
was rescued ( and after her mother had wandered up and down the earth
for six months creating sorrow and desolation and winter) she was
persuaded to eat, and managed a meal of six pomegranate seeds. So she
had to be Dis' wife for six months and could return to the upper earth
for the other six. Thus explaining spring.
See also W. Shakespeare, Winter's Tale,

O Proserpina
For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's waggon - daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes...............


Not surprising, in the slightest, because Michael is the editor of the wonderful poetry magazine in England called The Rialto. See their website: www.therialto.co.uk, better still buy the magazine it is one of the best literary mags in the land (and still financed by The Arts Council). I hope Michael will look kindly on my return to poesy if that is what I achieve this year. The episode in the supermarket made shopping a discovery and gave another spin on this time of the year: from Eliot to Mackmin in one leap. The Ides of March next perhaps, now who can help me on that road to discovery?