We Bear our Drinking better
Than others Bear their Moderation²
Get the Red Wine ready – for me to
Celebrate my Return to the Ailing Earth³
That which makes them Drunk makes me
Bold – What Quenches them gives me Fire⁴
The plan was to Drink until the Pain Over –
But what’s Worse, the Pain or the Hangover?⁵
There’s no Harm in him but the Drink – but
There’s not much left of him but the Drink⁶
We live by the Quaffing – Life has its Ale⁷
Drink! For you Don’t Know Whence
You Came, or Why – Drink! for you
Don’t Know Why you Go, or Where⁸
Bacchus must his Power Resign –
For I am the Only God of Wine!⁹
Malt does more than Milton can
To Justify God’s way to man¹⁰
¹ Hermann Hesse tr. Basil Creighton, Steppenwolf
² George Eliot, Middlemarch
³ Mahmoud Darwish tr. Munir Akash & Carolyn Forché, Mural
⁴ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
⁵ Kanye West, Dark Fantasy
⁶ Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea
⁷ Emily Dickinson, We – Bee and I
⁸ Omar Khayyám tr. Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát
⁹ Henry Carey, A Drinking-Song
¹⁰ A.E. Houseman, Terence, This is Stupid Stuff