Rigid and bony like an orchard in winter—
a single tree can produce forty types of fruit.
We can collapse a whole orchard
by injuring the tree
so that twenty varieties grow
on a single branch.
By timing the injuries precisely,
we reach the number forty—
somewhere between the finite
and the infinite.
A suburb in May flowers continuously
in red, a cipher of a capture of life,
which is to say life is obliged
not by chance, but by law
nourishes itself on a dead letter.
The most extreme point of development
and the most ancient
doing ‘violence to the most just’—
but this is the basic problem:
the orchard looks for light in the garden
giving itself to itself.
Nothing subsists indefinitely
and the absolute tree, distinguished by blows,
measured by severity, is an idea that remains
open and the sum of individuals.
Living and innocent,
the enigmatic figure
is a contradiction;
as when a person under taboo is no longer
considered holy but separated.
In the ongoing venture of hybridising fruit trees—
a feat accomplished by grafting native fruit
heirlooms and antiques, which are centuries old,
the blossoms display countless tones of crimson
in a stunning division from chance,
phenomena trained
so that finally law may bear children
and administer over trees.
*The Orchardist began as a erasure and plays on, alludes to, and quotes from, Homo Sacer by Giorgio Agamben (‘violence to the most just’) and interviews with professor Sam Van Aken (‘The Tree of 40 Fruit is a single tree that grows forty different types of stone fruit including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries, and almonds …’ and, ‘I could collapse a whole orchard and put it into one tree’).
Claire Miranda Roberts was born in Melbourne, Australia, and has lived in the UK, where she completed an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the ancient University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland. Claire’s poetry has been published in Antipodes, Communion, Plumwood Mountain, Text: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, and Westerly Magazine, among others. She has also been shortlisted and commended in several international literary competitions, including the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize 2020 and the Stephen Spender Prize 2021. The working manuscript for her first collection Kangaroo Paw was shortlisted for the 2021 Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award – Australia’s richest poetry prize for women. Most recently, Kangaroo Paw was shortlisted for the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for poetry.