Personal Choice Volume 2 No.15

for Helen

Mango Mousse

Mary Oliver

The latest Eating and Drinking Poems post is a nostalgic, mouth-watering homage to the warm, sweet taste of summer, the sticky juice of the mango, and Mary Oliver’s sharp, delicious poetry. For those who are lucky enough to live somewhere warm and vaguely tropical, enjoy. But even if you’re unlucky enough to still be caught up in the last dredges of winter, go ahead and kick off your sandals, lounge under a heat lamp, and daydream about summer living and sweet, sticky mangoes.

Monica Silva (food and poetry writer)

The Mango

One evening/ I met the mango./ At first there were four or five of them/ in a bowl./ They looked like stones you find/ in the rivers of Pennsylvania/ when the waters are low./ That size, and almost round./ Mossy green./ But this was a rich house, and clever too./ After salmon and salads,/ mangoes for everyone appeared on blue plates,/ each one cut in half and scored/ and shoved forward from its rind, like an orange flower,/ cubist and juicy./ When I began to eat/ things happened./ All through the sweetness I heard voices,/ men and women talking about something - / another country, and trouble./ It wasn’t my language, but I understood enough./ Jungles, and death. The ships/ leaving the harbors, their holds/ filled with mangoes./ Children, brushing the flies away/ from their hot faces/ as they worked in the fields./ Men, and guns./ The voices all ran together/ so that I tasted them in the taste of the mango,/ a sharp gravel in the flesh./ Later, in the kitchen, I saw the stones/ like torn-out tongues/ embedded in the honeyed centres./ They were talking among themselves -/ family news,/ a few lines of a song

Mary Oliver

 Ingredients

2 kilos pureed mango

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 can sweetened condensed milk

2 tbsp fresh lime juice

Directions

1. Combine pureed mangoes, sweetened condensed milk, and lime juice.

2. In separate bowl, whip cream until stiff. Fold into mango mixture.

3. Chill a few hours before

Mary Oliver (1935 - 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. She found inspiration for her work in nature and had a lifelong habit of solitary walks in the wild. Her poetry is characterized by a sincere wonderment and profound connection with the environment, conveyed in unadorned language and simple yet striking imagery. In 2007, she was declared to be the country's best-selling poet.