A CUP OF COFFEE
Transtabular
"It helps," admitted the professor to the student Who asked if such intake did not banish sleep— Each thereby owning an appropriate concern.
But let there be nothing needful about it:
Our addiction must be to thought, An optional sacrament of leisure; The astonished grateful detachment Of a morning after love.
As for dashing ascetic hopes— Tell the Oversoul wait a bit:
We dare be human now, and in resort Peer through all human things with half-shut eyes.
Or, if whiskey's for heroes, let coffee be for us Who won't rise up and follow, not just now; Who might through slavish centuries secrete subversion, Forgotten ironists, counterweight to martyrs, At bistro and hearth who nurse the secret of history; The world so far gone in the dark side now, We hoard across a table the drops of genial light, The linger of freedom firm as this grips the taste, Last solace of good men long to be ruled by worse.
Saved by this bitter from leaving much unquestioned, Kept by this glow from the folly of questioning all, In love with sharing our dream of the light of day, And lucky to guess we are less awake than we feel, We daily seek this affable reminder That only thinking makes our blurred life real.
