Perfection

                 O lovely apple!
beautifully and completely
                 rotten
hardly a contour marred--

                 perhaps a little
shrivelled at the top but that
                 aside perfect
in every detail! O lovely

                 apple! what a
deep and suffusing brown
                 mantles that
unspoiled surface! No one

                 has moved you
since I placed you on the porch
                 rail a month ago
to ripen.

                 No one. No one!

William Carlos Williams, The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, New Directions Publishing, 1938.