Who remembers eating his or her first peach? Nobody! Why? Because peaches are for amnesiacs. In fact, the peach is a huge hallucinogen — a round tab of sunlight that induces visions of Utopia. To eat of it is to dream that humankind can, by well-directed will and intellect, move closer and closer to a state of“divinity.” Repeated eating of peaches has led to some of the most benign leadership in all of history. Gandhi ate peaches. Mother Teresa ate peaches. Lennon ate peaches. When a bad peach is eaten, however, it is the whitest, weirdest side of the sunlight that slips into the mind’s long hallways and meadows, and there the dream of love — just as you reach for it — triggers some destruction. There, if you sing of love, towers fall and murders occur. In such a state the only way to preserve love is to be immobile and ignorant. But to eat of pure peaches — pure, radiant peaches — is a delight unequalled in all the known satisfactions of humankind and is easily worth the risk of going mad. Indeed, it is said that some, when finally tasting their first peach, have swooned and writhed in the ecstasy of mere taste. Poets fed peaches are fat with packed-in light. They glow from a centre in themselves that is totally luminous and willful. They eat a peach and they write another poem. They eat a peach and they glow in the dark. Poets eat peaches and forget. That is why they write poem after poem. That is why there is always juice on their chins.