Day 977: Over Wine

 'Happily I gulped a star...'

I love poems that delve into the delights of wine, that can match its effervescent effects with language, that can equate drinking it with falling in love. This poem does all this and more. Magical, beautiful, swoon-worthy.

Over Wine - Wislawa Szymborska

He glanced, gave me extra charm

and I took it as my own.

Happily I gulped a star.

I let myself be invented,

modeled on my own reflection

in his eyes. I dance, dance, dance

in the stir of sudden wings.

The chair's a chair, the wine is wine,

in a wineglass that's the wineglass

standing there by standing there.

Only I'm imaginary,

make-believe beyond belief;

so fictitious that it hurts.

And I tell him tales about

ants that die of love beneath

a dandelion's constellation.

I swear a white rose will sing

if you sprinkle it with wine.

I laugh and I tilt my head

cautiously, as if to check

whether the invention works.

I dance, dance inside my stunned

skin, in his arms that create me.

Eve from the rib, Venus from foam,

Minerva from Jupiter's head-

all three were more real than me.

When he isn't looking at me,

I try to catch my reflection

on the wall. And see the nail

where a picture used to be.