There was an emperor, ailing,
who thought his food was poisoned.
He was mad, of course. There was no poison.
And yet, the fruit of the one tree
in his private garden (which he took down,
fruit by fruit, with his own hands)
this did in fact heal him. Why was that?
Taking his life in his own hands,
tenderly, with loving mother care,
he fed himself. In that, his healing lay.

There was a poisoner, the emperor’s wife:
Nothing so easy as to kill a man
who would only eat a single food.
All it wanted was a little patience,
a single night of climbing,
of reaching up with her own hands
to each single fruit, smoothing
each curve so carefully, so surely,
with the poison of her choice.

It was a good job. He died soon.
It was his fate. But not so soon
as he might have, if he hadn’t thought
of the tree, and if the empress
hadn’t been slow, in her old age,
to climb those creaking, laden branches.

The tree ailed a bit, the first season,
what with the poisoned fruits —
so many more than needed — dropping,
rotting, and leaching down to the roots,
but in time it breathed through the taint.
You could see it now, still standing
there in the emperor’s garden,
if it hadn’t fallen, along with the palace,
quite a long time ago.