O Cheese by Donald Hall
I read this poem last year in an anthology and I was dismayed to find that I couldn’t locate it in its entirety anywhere online. I was even more dismayed to find that Donald Hall’s Old and New Poems had been lost from the public library. For some reason I didn’t check the UT library. Anyway, I was alerted to the fact that Donald Hall is the new Library of Congress’ 14th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by Ryan. I remembered that I never got to post the lovely cheese poem so I checked and the UT library did indeed have the book. So here you go. It’s best if read out loud enthusiastically! Enjoy!
O Cheese
By Donald Hall
In the pantry the dear dense cheeses, Cheddars and harsh
Lancashires; Gorgonzola with its magnanimous manner;
the clipped speech of Roquefort; and a head of Stilton
that speaks in a sensuous riddling tongue like Druids.
O cheeses of gravity, cheeses of wistfulness, cheeses
that weep continually because they know they will die.
O cheeses of victory, cheeses wise in defeat, cheeses
fat as a cushion, lolling in bed until noon.
Liederkranz ebullient, jumping like a small dog, noisy;
Pont l’Evêque intellectual, and quite well informed; Emmentaler
decent and loyal, a little deaf in the right ear;
and Brie the revealing experience, instantaneous and profound.
O cheeses that dance in the moonlight, cheeses
that mingle with sausages, cheeses of Stonehenge.
O cheeses that are shy, that linger in the doorway,
eyes looking down, cheeses spectacular as fireworks.
Reblochon openly sexual; Caerphilly like pine trees, small
at the timberline; Port du Salut in love; Caprice des Dieux
eloquent, tactful, like a thousand-year-old hostess;
and Dolcelatte, always generous to a fault.
O village of cheeses, I make you this poem of cheeses,
O family of cheeses, living together in pantries,
O cheeses that keep to your own nature, like a lucky couple,
this solitude, this energy, these bodies slowly dying.
