Baachus
My old friend! Your gut protuberant
your horns
palely carved, your tongue claret-sticky -
how good it is to see you! Take
the weight off your rump.
I think we’ve listened to this plopping
music before,
have we not? This lucid gluggling?
Tall-stemmed glasses catching fire from light?
So who’ll drink first? You or me?
How specific our taste is - for just this raisin,
just this weedy fragrance, the tannic
beatitudes of wine!
Do we abjure the proletariat of corn and hops?
We do!
Wine is how words taste, fermented in darkness,
releasing tongues from cobwebs that restrained them.
Old friend, I can see by the look on your face
you’ve
something to tell me. Good or bad? Speak!
Extract from ‘Cafe des Artistes” by John Hartley Williams (Cape Poetry)
Published in the Financial Times, April 18 / April 19 2009
