Etymology

In some of the old books, the question is asked:
     what if the apple was really a fig or a pear, 
a dangling ear of carob or St. John's bread; brown 
     clustered pods from the Tamarindus tree, thin-
skinned and shattering easily at touch? Such fruit, 
     linked to the maternal for the way the smallest pits 
burrow into flesh: sown in the belly's sweet depths, stuck 
     in the throat or spat out and back into the soil. What
if the gleam in the leaves was really the pomegranate 
     whose hull, split down the middle, revealed ovaries 
packed with seed? And they lodged there because the man  
     lay down with the woman, or because the girl kidnapped  
into the underworld put six cool rubies under her tongue 
     to become more than what she was before--- Isn't that 
the meaning of knowledge: everything you can't untaste, 
     unsee, unfeel? The more you know, the less the world seems
an unmarked scroll where the opposite of knowledge isn't
     really that you don't know, but rather that you know
perhaps too much already. Each node branches off into
     a V. No matter what it's called, each sticky bud
broken off from its base bursts with milk or sap or stain.