Pomegranate Quotes

He offered her his hand once more, and the wide, flat palm beckoned.
Hades, offering pomegranate seeds.
If she took it, everything would change. Everything would be different.
There would be no going back. Though, somewhere in her mind, she knew there was no going back anyway.
Clutching her dress together, she took his hand. ~ Sarah MacLean

I tell myself that one day, one good and happy day, I will return and I will buy a house with a small garden that faces the sun and has a view of the mountains. I will plant the seeds of the good lady's pomegranate and I will divide its fruit among the people in the neighborhood. Those who taste the pomegranate of love will know that they are brothers and sisters. Whenever their eyes meet, their hearts will fill with joy and their soul will find peace. ~ Goli Taraghi

The first change is a realization that I am no longer alone. Even when I'm lying in the dark by myself, I now sense other beings hovering near me. It isn't just me living in this house, but unfinished love and my dejection and anger and dead Paulie, and their miraculous presence feels as real as my fingernails digging into my hand. The second change is that I'm not more obsessed with cooking, like the Roman gourmets and their cherished chefs, who wanted to put all things wonderful or special or new or majestic or strange or scary-looking on the table. The cooks back then knew only how to bake or boil, but I understand how a few drops of pomegranate juice can transform a dish. The third change is that with these first two revelations, my sense of taste has become ever more sensitive and sharp, my imagination richer. When I got my ears pierced and walked into the street in the middle of winter, I become one large ear. All sensation and pain were concentrated in my ears. It's that same feeling. Everything about me disappears and I'm only a pink tongue. This is the time to grow into a truly good chef. ~ Kyung-ran Jo

Sonnet V
I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place
patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle
and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches
so I carry faraway's land and it carries me on travel's road
On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves
a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time.
I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds
that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens
Out of jasmine the night's blood streams white. Your perfume,
my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair
is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech
to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves
I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time
and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place - anew ~ Mahmoud Darwish

Peel your heart like a pomegranate.
Offer it to him, palms outwards.
Say "eat." Watch him come away
stained red by you.
You're in his teeth. He'll kiss you with that mouth. ~ Azra T.

Then there are words like pomegranate trees in bloom,
words like the sun igniting the sea beyond mountainous horizons,
flashing like mysterious knives ...

Such words are the burning roses of an infinite imagination;
they are born and they die with the flutterings of butterflies;
we carry those words in our hearts like pregnant shotguns until the day we expire,
martyred for the words we were prepared to die for ... ~ Attilâ İlhan

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It wasn't often that I had difficulty tasting something. Flavor was the way people like me made sense of the world.
We knew that there was a flavor that explained you-even to yourself. A flavor whose truth you recognized when you tasted it. A flavor that answered the question you didn't know you had.
Perhaps it was a voluptuous vanilla that your sharp-edged self could sink into like a pillow. Or a homesick pomegranate, each seed like a ruby slipper that would take you back to the place where you were loved and where people had missed you. ~ Judith Fertig

I have to close my eyes as the flavors burst in my mouth - gentle heat from the pepper, salty tang of the pork, sweetness of pomegranate, the velvety-rich walnut sauce. He's waiting, but I don't know what to say. 'I love you; can I have your babies' might scare him, but it's my most sincere thought. ~ Jessica Martinez

Surely, somewhere in the back of Bulfinch, in a part Lillian had not gotten to, there is an obscure (abstruse, arcane, shadowy, and even hidden) version of Proserpine in he Underworld in which a tired Jewish Ceres schleps through the outskirts of Tartarus, an ugly village of tired whores who must double as laundresses and barbers, a couple of saloons, a nearly empty five-and-dime, and people too poor to pull up stakes. In this version, Ceres looks all over town for her Proserpine, who crossed the River Cyane in a pretty sailboat with Pluto, having had the good sense to come to an understanding with the king early on. Pluto and Proserpine picnic in a charming park, twinkling lights overhead and handsome wide benches like the ones in Central Park. When Ceres comes, tripping a little on her hem as she walks through the soft grass, muttering and trying to yank Proserpine to her feet so they can start the long trip home to Enna and daylight (which has lost much of its luster, now that Proserpine is queen of all she surveys), the girl does not jump up at the sight of her mother, but takes her time handing out the sandwiches and pours cups of sweetened tea for the three of them. She lays a nicely ironed napkin in her lap and another in the lap of her new husband, the king. Proserpine does not eat the pomegranate seeds by mistake, or in a moment of desperate hunger, or fright, or misunderstanding. She takes the pomegranate slice out of her husband's dark and glittering hand and pulls ~ Amy Bloom

For her, from the Tiber down, there, there beyond the crumbling castles, and after the blond vineyards, there was, on the hills and mountains, and in the brief plains of Italy, a kind of great fertile womb, two swollen Eustachian tubes, streaked with an abundance of granules, the granular and greasy, the happy caviar of the race. From time to time, from the great Ovary ripened follicles opened, like pomegranate seeds: and red grains, mad with amorous certitude, descended upon the city, to encounter the male afflatus, the vitalizing impulse, that spermatic aura of which the ovarists of the eighteenth century wrote their fantastic treatise. ~ Carlo Emilio Gadda

A cascade of thousands of pomegranate pits fructify her from above and female hands maculate the goddess's body in the musical mists of mind-blowing nightly sex. But they won't fuck her, they will kill her. ~ Laura Gentile

A lime tart with pomegranate glaze."
I put the tart on the counter. The crust was the perfect shade of golden brown, and as I cut into it, the bright red glaze contrasted beautifully with the pale green lime custard filling. ~ Rajani LaRocca

I envied women with signature hair-dos, signature perfumes, signature sign-offs. Novelists who tell Vogue Magazine: "I can't live without my Smythson notebook, Pomegranate Noir cologne by Jo Malone and Frette sheets". In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system. ~ Emma Forrest

I felt my heart crack slowly like a pomegranate, spilling its seeds. ~ Trebor Healey

WHAT WAS TOLD, THAT
What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest.
What was told the cypress that made it strong and straight, what was
whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made sugarcane sweet, whatever
was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in Turkestan that makes them
so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush like a human face, that is
being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in language, that's happening here.
The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude, chewing a piece of sugarcane,
in love with the one to whom every that belongs! ~ Coleman Barks

On top of the good was a hideously ugly bronze statue in the modern style. The statue was of a couple, dressed in togas, wrapped in an embrace. Cupped in their hands was a piece of fruit. I couldn't be sure, because realism did not appear to be the artist's specialty, but it looked to me like a pomegranate.
"Good God," Frank, who'd trailed after us, said when he saw the statue. "Rector's even sicker than any of us thought. I've never wished I was blind before, like Graves, but I do now, because then I'd never have to look at that again."
"Frank," John said, his gaze on my face. "Be quiet."
"But what do they do in here?" Frank wanted to know. "Have picnics with their dead relatives and admire their ugly art? ~ Meg Cabot

There is no together anymore. Once a pomegranate breaks and all its seeds scatter in differetnt directions, you cannot put it back together. ~ Elif Shafak

The broken pomegranate is full of stars. ~ George Seferis (Seferiades)

In the morning, I wake up and find a pomegranate on my doorstep: red and perfect, round as the world itself. ~ Katie Cotugno

Mother, he is a gentleman.
He is a builder with bricks of moonlight.
He knows the secret places of the earth.
He washes the sleep from the eyes of the souls.
He lets them look on beauty.
He lets them tell him they hate him.
In the mornings, I gather berries and apples.
I scrub his back with rind.
I weave spider-spit, eyelash.
He talks in his sleep: pudding, fire, discus,
the things he misses.
He breathes, Your body is my orchard.
I am undulating grass.
I am a field of wheat he parts with his fingers.
Poppies bloom in my veins.
When he kisses me, he tastes pomegranate.
The night crawls nearer.
The moans of the dead roll and swell.
Mother, we are well. ~ Tara Mae Mulroy

Adversity is like the period of the rain ... cold, comfortless, unfriendly to people and to animals; yet from that season have their birth the flower, the fruit, the date, the rose and the pomegranate. ~ Walter Scott

Rahab pondered the thought. "I don't suppose a pomegranate or a fig as an offering would have the same effect on our hearts. To see an innocent life taken in our place is much more humbling than offering Adonai fruit. ~ Jill Eileen Smith

During the course of my research on #herbs mentioned in the #Bible , I found that #pomegranate is regarded as a wonder #fruit in many other. ~ Sudhir Ahluwalia

Then there are the words that the Song of Solomon provides a man. The enchanting words of courtship."
She closed her eyes and, lips parted, began to chant. "How beautiful you are, my love, your eyes are doves.... Your lips are like a crimson thread, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate.... Your neck is like the tower of David.... Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies. ~ Talia Carner

The older lady harrumphed. "I warned you, daughter. This scoundrel Hades is no good. You could've married the god of doctors or the god of lawyers, but noooo. You had to eat the pomegranate." "Mother - " "And get stuck in the Underworld!" "Mother, please - " "And here it is August, and do you come home like you're supposed to? Do you ever think about your poor lonely mother?" "DEMETER!" Hades shouted. ~ Rick Riordan

Oh my son," sighed Ama. "I was talking to the shadows of the pomegranate trees. At least they will be here when we are all gone. ~ Tariq Ali

Close to the Gates a spacious Garden lies, From the Storms defended and inclement Skies; Four Acres was the allotted Space of Ground, Fenc'd with a green Enclosure all around. Tall thriving Trees confessed the fruitful Mold: The reddening Apple ripens here to Gold, Here the blue Fig with luscious Juice overflows, With deeper Red the full Pomegranate glows, The Branch here bends beneath the weighty Pear, And verdant Olives flourish round the Year. ~ Homer

Pomegranate juice has staying power. It's not a fad. Once people have tasted POM Wonderful, they say they are addicted - and it's a good addiction to have. ~ Lynda Resnick

You are like pomegranates split open. Even the emptiest among you are as full of good as a pomegranate is full of seed. ~ Adam Gidwitz

The salmon is perfectly cooked. The trace amounts of sugar contained in the wheat flour have combined with the butter in a chemical reaction that's creating a wonderful fragrance. It was all fried together for precisely the right amount of time to create a superb Meunière."
"The squid liver was quickly sautéed in a dollop of butter as well, taking a bite of that with the Meunière is sublime! The butter's flavor gently wraps around the salty and pleasantly bitter taste of the liver, giving it a beautifully mellow body."
"He added pomegranate seeds and tonburi to the soy sauce marinated roe! Those three completely disparate flavors meld into a seamless whole thanks to butter! Not only does it have an amusing texture, the roe doesn't have its typical greasiness either!"
*Tonburi, also called land caviar, is the seeds of the summer cypress plant. It's texture is similar to caviar.*
He's used mounds of butter in so many different facets of the dish, but it somehow hasn't made the flavor heavy at all. The secret to that lies in the bed of special sushi rice hidden underneath the seafood!
"This sushi rice was made not with vinegar but with orange juice and lemon juice!"
"So that's why he was squeezing that mountain of oranges!" ~ Yuto Tsukuda

Why not?" I asked, letting my tears spill over. It was easy to cry. All I had to do was look at Alex's limp body, and the tears came effortlessly. "You were happy enough to do it to me."
There was a beat. Then John said cautiously, "What do you mean?"
"The consequences, John?" I let out a bitter laugh. "Persephone wasn't doomed to stay in the Underworld because she ate a pomegranate. She was doomed to stay there because she did with Hades what we did last night. That's what the pomegranate symbolizes, right?"
John stared, speechless. But I could tell I was right by the color that slowly started to suffuse his cheeks…and the fact that he didn't try to contradict me.
And of course the fact that the whole thing was spelled out right in front of me by the statue Hope was sitting on. I didn't get why the Rectors were so obsessed by the myth of Persephone that they'd put a statue of it in their mausoleum, but it was clear enough they were involved in an underworld of one kind or another.
"Don't worry," I said, lowering my voice because I didn't want Frank to overhear. "I don't blame you. You asked me if I was sure, despite the consequences. I said I was. But I thought by consequences you meant a baby, and I already knew that could never happen. I guess Mr. Smith must have told you last night that he found out the pomegranate symbolized something completely different than babies or death-"
"Pierce." John grasped my hand. His fingers were like ice, but h ~ Meg Cabot

Grace thinks of Persephone and the pomegranate seeds. She took something for herself when Jes offered her that first cigarette, and again with her photographs at Holy Communion. And look at her: she's ended up staying so much longer than she ever thought she'd be allowed to. ~ Zan Romanoff

During times of war.
I want to say:
I only love you,
And I cling you,
Like the peel clings to a pomegranate,
Like the tear clings to the eye,
Like the knife clings to the wound. ~ Nizar Qabbani

Words.

I'm surrounded by thousands of words. Maybe millions.

Cathedral. Mayonnaise. Pomegranate.
Mississippi. Neapolitan. Hippopotamus.
Silky. Terrifying. Iridescent.
Tickle. Sneeze. Wish. Worry.

Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes - each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.

Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs.

From the time I was really little - maybe just a few months old - words were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them like lemonade. I could almost taste them. They made my jumbled thoughts and feelings have substance. My parents have always blanketed me with conversation. They chattered and babbled. They verbalized and vocalized. My father sang to me. My mother whispered her strength into my ear.

Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.

I have no idea how I untangled the complicated process of words and thought, but it happened quickly and naturally. By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.

But only in my head.

I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old. ~ Sharon M. Draper

Unlike the classical Greeks, for whom the fruit symbolized the inescapable cycle of bitter death, with a remorseful Persephone returning to the underworld for her six months of required winter, Marjan liked to believe the old stories of Persian soothsayers, who held a different vision of the tart fruit's purpose in life. She liked to remember that above all else, above all the unfortunate connotations of death and winter, the pomegranate was, and always would be, the fruit of hope.
The flower of fertility, of new things and old seasons to be cradled. ~ Marsha Mehran

So where does the name Adam's apple come from? Most people say that it is from the notion that this bump was caused by the forbidden fruit getting stuck in the throat of Adam in the Garden of Eden. There is a problem with this theory because some Hebrew scholars believe that the forbidden fruit was the pomegranate. The Koran claims that the forbidden fruit was a banana. So take your pick
Adam's apple, Adam's pomegranate, Adam's banana. Eve clearly chewed before swallowing. ~ Mark Leyner

They'd welcomed him aboard their ship. Nico had never allowed himself the luxury of friends, but the crew of the Argo II was as close as he'd ever come. The idea of any of them dying made him feel empty – like he was back in the giants' bronze jar, alone in the dark, subsisting only on sour pomegranate seeds. ~ Rick Riordan

If you have caviar, the way to eat it is by the spoonful. Don't combine it with shrimp, pomegranate seeds and huitlacoche. ~ Ruth Reichl

Miss Rook, on a scale of one to pomegranate, how dangerous would you say this situation has become?"

"Dangerous?" I faltered.

"Yes, Miss Rook," prompted Jackaby, in your expert opinion."

"On a scale of one to pomegranate?" I followed his lead, checking over the notes I had scribbled in my notepad and speaking in my most audible, serious whisper. "I should think ... acorn? Possibly badger. Time alone will tell. ~ William Ritter

Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Rom. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops:

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

Jul. Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone,

Rom. Let me be ta'en,, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'T is but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;

Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay than will to go:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so,
How is't my soul? let's talk; it is not day.

Jul. It is, it is; hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us:

William Shakespeare

...Would you like to know the view I have out of my window, since you love snow? So here you are: the broad whiteness of the Moldau, and along that whiteness, little black silhouettes of people cross from one shore to the other, like musical notes. For example, the figure of some boy is dragging behind him a D-sharp: a sledge. Across the river there are snowy roofs in a distant, lightweight sky...


I walked around the cathedral along a slippery path between snowdrifts. The snow was light, dry: grab a handful, throw it up, and it disperses in the air like dust, as if flying back up. The sky darkened. In it appeared a thin golden moon: half of a broken halo. I walked along the edge of the fortress wall. Old Prague lay below in the thickening mist. The snowy roofs clustered together, cumbrous and dim. The houses seemed to have been piled anyhow, in a moment of terrible and fantastic carelessness. In this frozen storm of outlines, in this snowy semi-darkness, the streetlamps and windows were burning with a warm and sweet lustre, like well-licked punch lollipops. In just one place you could also see a little scarlet light, a drop of pomegranate juice. And in the fog of crooked walls and smoky corners I divined an ancient ghetto, mystical ruins, the alley of Alchemists... ~ Vladimir Nabokov

A pomegranate is filled with rubies when you open it up. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend - but not for me. I love rubies; they're great over necks, you know. ~ Lynda Resnick

A Rakshasi did not live here.
A princess did.
I was staring into the most dazzling garden I had ever seen. Cobblestone pathways meandered between rows of salmon-hued hibiscus, regal hollyhock, delicate impatiens, wild orchids, thorny rosebushes, and manicured shrubs starred with jasmine. Bunches of bougainvillea cascaded down the sides of the wall, draped across the stone like extravagant shawls. Magnolia trees, cotton-candy pink, were interspersed with coconut trees, which let in streaks of purplish light through their fanlike leaves. A rock-rimmed pond glistened in a corner of the garden, and lotus blossoms sprouting from green discs skimmed its surface. A snow white bird that looked like a peacock wove in and out through a grove of pomegranate trees, which were set aflame by clusters of deep orange blossoms. I had seen blue peacocks before, but never a white one.
An Ashoka tree stood at one edge of the garden, as if on guard, near the door. A brief wind sent a cluster of red petals drifting down from its branches and settling on the ground at my feet. A flock of pale blue butterflies emerged from a bed of golden trumpet flowers and sailed up into the sky. In the center of this scene was a peach stucco cottage with green shutters and a thatched roof, quaint and idyllic as a dollhouse. A heavenly perfume drifted over the wall, intoxicating me- I wanted nothing more than to enter. ~ Kamala Nair

My sweet strawberry,
Your frowning eyebrows, almond eyes, pomegranate lips and cherry nail fingers
Does not make me love you limitless
Nor your sweet smiles, lovely jokes, and charming glances
It is you; that makes smile sweet, glances lovely and eyes gorgeous
Over and over again I see thousands everyday smiling and frowning;
But they all seem tasteless
It is you, as always the most perfect and unique
Strawberry!!! ~ M.F. Moonzajer

Imagine this:
Instead of waiting in her tower, Rapunzel slices off her long, golden hair with a carving knife, and then uses it to climb down to freedom.
Just as she's about to take the poison apple, Snow White sees the familiar wicked glow in the old lady's eyes, and slashes the evil queen's throat with a pair of sewing scissors.
Cinderella refuses everything but the glass slippers from her fairy godmother, crushes her stepmother's windpipe under her heel, and the Prince falls madly in love with the mysterious girl who dons rags and blood-stained slippers.

Imagine this:
Persephone goes adventuring with weapons hidden under her dress.
Persephone climbs into the gaping chasm.
Or, Persephone uses her hands to carve a hole down to hell.
In none of these versions is Persephone's body violated unless she asks Hades to hold her down with his horse-whips.
Not once does she hold out on eating the pomegranate, instead biting into it eagerly and relishing the juice running down her chin, staining it red.
In some of the stories, Hades never appears and Persephone rules the underworld with a crown of her own making.
In all of them, it is widely known that the name Persephone means Bringer of Destruction.

Imagine this:
Red Riding Hood marches from her grandmother's house with a bloody wolf pelt.
Medusa rights the wrongs that have been done to her.
Eurydice breaks every muscle in her arms climbi ~ Theappleppielifestyle

No, don't blush, with your hair it makes you look like a pomegranate. ~ George R R Martin

... Like most youngest children, he had trouble remembering his own past. The older ones did it so well for him, why should he bother? They had built him a second-hand memory that included the years before he existed, even. He had a distinct memory of Melissa's running away from home with a peanut sandwich and a pomegranate, two years before he was born; but he himself, with his locust on a leash, had vanished.
-- pg 273-74 ~ Anne Tyler

I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles; I loved that there was a poor box, the stations of the cross rendered in stained glass on the windows. ~ Anne Lamott

The Pomegranate

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at t ~ Eavan Boland

While still sixteen I am put in charge of a class of forty children who are two, three or four years younger than I. I fall in love with them. They are my possession, my mob whose forty minds, under my flashy and domineering control, are to become one, a mind unsullied by errors, unmarked by blots, contaminated by misplaced originalities outside the curriculum, and as full of facts as a pomegranate seed. ~ Hal Porter

Estrella wished she could pry the ground open like the shell of a pomegranate, spilling out its secrets like shining red seeds. ~ Anna-Marie McLemore

The purple butterflies fluttered about with gold dust on their wings, visiting each flower in turn; the little lizards crept out of the crevices of the wall, and lay basking in the white glare; and the pomegranates split and cracked with the heat, and showed their bleeding red hearts. Even the pale yellow lemons, that hung in such profusion from the mouldering trellis and along the dim arcades, seemed to have caught a richer colour from the wonderful sunlight, and the magnolia trees opened their great globe-like blossoms of folded ivory, and filled the air with a sweet heavy perfume. ~ Oscar Wilde

Full sun.
Starlings flock,
nasturtiums burst into blossom.

And me, cracking open a pomegranate I think to myself,
"If only the seeds of the heart could be so transparent,"

when the juice spurts out and splashes into my eyes,
vermilion tears trickling down.

My mother bursts out laughing
and Rana too. ~ Sohrab Sepehri

Fairy Song
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! oh, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
Dry your eyes! oh, dry your eyes!
For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies, -
Shed no tear.

Overhead! look overhead!
'Mong the blossoms white and red -
Look up, look up! I flutter now
On this fresh pomegranate bough.
See me! 'tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man's ill.
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu - I fly - adieu!
I vanish in the heaven's blue, -
Adieu, adieu! ~ John Keats

In the moment when that glass passed from his hand to mine, something sent up a high wild warning cry in the back of my mind. Persephone's irrevocable pomegranate seeds, Never take food from strangers; old stories where one sip or bite seals the spellbound walls forever, dissolves the road home into mist and blows it away on the wind. ~ Tana French

And after that they had gone through many streets they came to a little door that was set in a wall that was covered with a pomegranate tree. And the old man touched the door with a ring of graved jaspar and it opened, and they went down five steps of brass into a garden filled with black poppies and green jars of burnt clay. ~ Oscar Wilde

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter. ~ Rumi