XI
Your ancient, unknown author asks: What can
Match that man's joy who drinks the man-made wine,
Except a deeper ecstasy, the divine
Joy of the wine to feel itself made man?
Thus poets see Nature's temple, less a place
Of living pillars where all things correspond,
Than one where each world knows a world beyond
And all things yearn for that supreme embrace.
All things solicit the poet for his art
To change dumb being into sentient wine;
Flowers turn their faces, stones implore his feet.
Drunk with those lives, he reels toward the sign
Where, in his turn, the secular paraclete
Cries: Drink, engulf me, let me feel my heart.
XI
Du Yin et Du Haschisch: III.
