‘Peach’ by D. H. Lawrence




Would you like to throw a stone at me?

Here, take all that’s left of my peach.


Blood-red, deep:

Heaven knows how it came to pass.

Somebody’s pound of flesh rendered up.


Wrinkled with secrets

And hard with the intention to keep them.


Why, from silvery peach-bloom,

From that shallow-silvery wine-glass on a short stem

This rolling, dropping, heavy globule?




Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy?

Why hanging with such inordinate weight?

Why so indented?


Why the groove?

Why the lovely, bivalve roundnesses?

Why the ripple down the sphere?

Why the suggestion of incision?



It would have been if man had made it.

Though I’ve eaten it now.


But it wasn’t round and finished like a billiard ball;



Here, you can have my peach stone.


San Gervasio  D. H. Lawrence (1923)


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David Herbert Lawrence, English author, poet, literary critic (1885–1930) is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

Lawrence’s hard working-class upbringing shaped his life, and he wrote extensively about the experience of growing up in the poor mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire.  “Whatever I forget,” he said, “I shall not forget the Haggs, a tiny red brick farm on the edge of the wood, where I got my first incentive to write.”

A prolific writer and traveller, Lawrence earned fame for his earthy novels (some banned) and short stories, and subsequently received acclaim for his personal letters in which he detailed a range of emotions, from exhilaration to depression to ruminating on life and death.

The story of his ashes and final resting place makes intriguing reading on Poets’ Graves

Gretchen Bernet-Ward