The Soul of Wine

By Peter Donnelly

After the French of Charles Baudelaire.

One night, the soul was wine warbling in its bottles:

"Dejected man, to you I now turn my gaze

From my jail of vermilion wax and glass

And extend good will to you in a light-blaze!

“Incepted from the sweat and heat beating

At the sun-scorched and -baked hill --

It set my soul and being germinating --

I’ll never be ungrateful or effect any ill.

“I rush over with joy when released

Down the throat of those drained by labour.

Like a gentle tomb to me, the human chest --

I realize myself in there, as if back in the cellar!

“Can you recall the Sunday-mass chants,

And the hope singing through my body?

Sleeves rolled, elbows on table, you’re content;

It delivers to me a kind of glory.

“I’ll imbue your wife’s eyes with light, instill

Life-force and -colour in your son;

To the bruised athlete of life, I’ll be the oil

That soothes the muscle it’s rubbed on.

“Into you I fall, vegetal ambrosial –

Precious grain scattered by the eternal Sower!

And poetry germinating out of this love will

Manifest and bloom like a rare flower!”

(2016)

Peter Donnelly’s first collection, Photons, was published by Appello Press in 2014.

His second collection, Money Is a Kind of Poetry, was published by Smokestack Books in 2019, and he is (slowly) working on a third collection.

He occasionally tweets @Peatstweets.