Some Frost with some Larkin

[Thunderembargo]

After Apple-Picking
~ Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Although this is not at all Frosts intended meaning --- at least, most likely it is not --- I get a really strong image of Jacob (Isaac's Son from the Old Testament) trying to get 'human sleep' before laying his head down on the Clinton Rock.   Did Jacob eat an apple before wrestling (and defeating) the angel.?  

It is interesting that poems such as these, with such classic appeal and widely received reverberations---both by popular and critical audiences---should receive a wide variety of disparate responses.   This is one of the difficulties and challenges of PopArt.   When working with conventional symbols (such as an APPLE or a LADDER) that are shared by the general population, as well as required for their sustainability, then the requisitioning of a poem such as this for popular convenience becomes necessary. 

Could Bill Gates or Steve Jobs find use for such a poem, for instance, as a form of post-modern merchandising?

These are simply different things to think about for the requisitioning of new forms, ideations, formalizations, formulas and forums in the milennial generation.