Red Wines Quotes

The first duty of wine is to be red. Don't talk to me of your white wines.

A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.

I don't know you. The only thing I know about you is, you're reading this. I don't know if your happy or not; I don't know whether you're young or not. I sort of hope you're young and sad. If you're old and happy, I can imagine that you'll smile to yourself when you hear me going, he broke my heart. You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, Oh yes, i remember how that feels. But you can't, you smug old git. Oh you'll remember feeling sort of plesantly sad. You might remember listening to music and eating chocolates in your room, or walking along the embankment on your own, wrapped up in a winter coat and feeling lonely and brave. But can you remember how with every mouthful of food it felt like you were biting into your own stomach? Can you remember the taste of red wine as it came back up and into the toilet bowl? Can you remember dreaming every night that you were still together, that he was talking to you gently and touching you, so that every morning when you woke up you had to go through it all over again?

I wonder if you know yet that you’ll leave me. That you are a child playing with matches and I have a paper body. You will meet a girl with a softer voice and stronger arms and she will not have violent secrets or an affection for red wine or eyes that never stay dry. You will fall into her bed and I’ll go back to spending Friday nights with boys who never learn my last name.

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!

Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all.

The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.

Beer has that Olympic medal color,” Rot replied, “but does it have a winning taste? I’d hardly call silver a champion flavor. No, I’ll stick to my red wine.

Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli- I will forgive you.

My aunt used to say, if you don't fit in, fool everyone until you do. She also said to keep your passport renewed, to pair red wines with meat and whites with everything else, to find work that is fulfilling to your heart as well as your head, to never forget to fall in love whenever you can find it because love is nothing if not a matter of timing, and to chase the moon. Always, always chase the moon.

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.

Tony poured wine into each glass and handed one to Claire. “Do you remember when we had wine at the Red Wing?” Claire closed her eyes, recalling the scene from a lifetime ago, and nodded. “I do.” “I’d been watching you for years. I was so nervous that night. I thought I was planning your acquisition.” He looked into his red liquid. Her stance straightened, “If you’re using business metaphors, may I suggest hostile takeover. It’s more appropriate.

Sometimes the toilet paper does not win. Sometimes a broke woman needs the red wine more.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.

I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.

If your arteries are good, eat more ice cream. If they are bad, drink more red wine. Proceed thusly.

There is some delight in ale and wine And some in girls with ankles fine But my delight, yes always mine Is to dance with Jak O’ the Shadows We will toss the dice however they fall And snuggle the girls be they short or tall Then follow Lord Mat whenever he calls To dance with Jak O’ the Shadows.

All worries are less with wine.

Hiram!' Shelton ran to Hi's side. 'Aren't you you bleeding? I thought she shot you!' 'Red wine. When I saw it running everywhere, I played dead.' He winced as Shelton poked his belly. 'But I'm not leaping off any more shelves. That was pretty stupid.

I gestured at my litre of fizzy red wine. “Want a drop of this?” I asked him. No thanks. I try not to drink at lunchtime.” So do I. But I never quite make it.” I feel like shit all day if I drink at lunchtime.” Me too. But I feel like shit all lunchtime if I don’t.” Yes, well it all comes down to choices, doesn’t it?” he said. “It’s the same in the evenings. Do you want to feel good at night or do you want to feel good in the morning? It’s the same with life. Do you want to feel good young or do you want to feel good old? One or the other, not both.” Isn’t it a tragedy?

I asked him for it. For the blood, for the rust, for the sin. I didn’t want the pearls other girls talked about, or the fine marble of palaces, or even the roses in the mouth of servants. I wanted pomegranates— I wanted darkness, I wanted him. So I grabbed my king and ran away to a land of death, where I reigned and people whispered that I’d been dragged. I’ll tell you I’ve changed. I’ll tell you, the red on my lips isn’t wine. I hope you’ve heard of horns, but that isn’t half of it. Out of an entire kingdom he kneels only to me, calls me Queen, calls me Mercy. Mama, Mama, I hope you get this. Know the bed is warm and our hearts are cold, know never have I been better than when I am here. Do not send flowers, we’ll throw them in the river. ‘Flowers are for the dead’, ‘least that’s what the mortals say. I’ll come back when he bores me, but Mama, not today.

White wine is like electricity. Red wine looks and tastes like a liquified beefsteak.

I don’t trust the answers or the people who give me the answers. I believe in dirt and bone and flowers and fresh pasta and salsa cruda and red wine. I don’t believe in white wine; I insist on color.

and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.

Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running -- that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach....

You are my winter suddenness—a glass of red wine spilt across a white tablecloth

I wonder if you know yet that you’ll leave me. That you are a child playing with matches and I have a paper body. You will meet a girl with a softer voice and stronger arms and she will not have violent secrets or an affection for red wine or eyes that never stay dry. You will fall into her bed and I’ll go back to spending Friday nights with boys who never learn my last name. I have chased off every fool who has tried to sleep beside me You think it’s romantic to fuck the girl who writes poems about you. You think I’ll understand your sadness because I live inside my own. But I will show up at your door at 2 am, wild-eyed and sleepless. and try and find some semblance of peace in your breastbone and you will not let me in. You will tell me to go home.

Suppose neutral angels were able to talk, Yahweh and Lucifer – God and Satan, to use their popular titles – into settling out of court. What would be the terms of the compromise? Specifically, how would they divide the assets of their early kingdom? Would God be satisfied the loaves and fishes and itty-bitty thimbles of Communion wine, while Satan to have the red-eye gravy, eighteen-ounce New York Stakes, and buckets of chilled champagne? Would God really accept twice-a-month lovemaking for procreative purposes and give Satan the all night, no-holds-barred, nasty “can’t-get-enough-of-you” hot-as-hell-fucks? Think about it. Would Satan get New Orleans, Bangkok, and the French Riviera and God get Salt Lake City? Satan get ice hockey, God get horseshoes? God get bingo, Satan get stud poker? Satan get LSD; God, Prozac? God get Neil Simon; Satan Oscar Wilde?

Before you came, things were as they should be: the sky was the dead-end of sight, the road was just a road, wine merely wine. Now everything is like my heart, a color at the edge of blood: the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns, the gold when we meet, the season ablaze, the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames, and the black when you cover the earth with the coal of dead fires. And the sky, the road, the glass of wine? The sky is a shirt wet with tears, the road a vein about to break, and the glass of wine a mirror in which the sky, the road, the world keep changing. Don’t leave now that you’re here— Stay. So the world may become like itself again: so the sky may be the sky, the road a road, and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

Decade When you came, you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant. I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, But I am completely nourished.

I loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread. But that has not happened to me. My loves remain wine to me, yet I become too quickly bread to them.

This came from Sandra. "Roses are red, violets are blue, rhyming is hard. Wine.

Branson ate his salad, and left the rest of his fish untouched, while Grace tucked into his steak and kidney pudding with relish. 'I read a while ago,' he told Branson, 'that the French drink more red wine than the English but live longer. The Japanese eat more fish than the English but drink less wine and live longer. The Germans eat more red meat than the English, and drink more beer and they live longer too. You know the moral of this story? 'No' 'It's not what you eat or drink - it's speaking English that kills you.

For you she learned to wear a short black slip and red lipstick, how to order a glass of red wine and finish it. She learned to reach out as if to touch your arm and then not touch it, changing the subject. Didn't you think, she'd begin, or Weren't you sorry. . . . To call your best friends by their schoolboy names and give them kisses good-bye, to look away when they say Your wife! So your confidence grows. She doesn't ask what you want because she knows. Isn't that what you think? When actually she was only waiting to be told Take off your dress--- to be stunned, and then do this, never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious: in one motion up, over, and gone, the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing, her face flashing away from you in the fabric so that you couldn't say if she was appearing or disappearing.

In all this welter of women I still hadn't got one for myself, not that I was trying too hard, but sometimes I felt lonely to see everybody paired off and having a good time and all I did was curl up in my sleeping bag in the rosebushes and sigh and say bah. For me it was just red wine in my mouth and a pile of firewood

You have had me spinning for days, for I am drunk off the words that flow endlessly from your deep red lips that taste of wine.

Most days I juggle everything quite well, on the other days there's always red wine.

Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat & stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame crimson, and I am content"......Conan the Cimmerian.

And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine Burned like the ruby fire set In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.

Red wine tastes like a dark-walled library and white wine smells like a woman looking away.

His beard was all colors, a grove of trees in autumn, deep brown and fire-orange and wine-red, an untrimmed tangle across the lower half of his face. His cheeks were apple-red. He looked like a friend; like someone you had known all your life.

The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.

Those old hypocrites. They talk about killing witches but the Good Book’s full of magic. Turning the Nile to blood and parting the Red Sea. What’s that if it’s not good old-fashioned magic? Want a little water into wine? No trouble! How about raising the dead man Lazarus? Just say the word!

Hunger gives flavour to the food.

Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions ― a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard ― can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.

We will never fight again, our lovely, quick, template-ready arguments. Our delicate cross-stitch of bickers. The house becomes a physical encyclopedia of no-longer hers, which shocks and shocks and is the principal difference between our house and a house where illness has worked away. Ill people, in their last day on Earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying ‘OH NO YOU DON’T COCK-CHEEK’. She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone. She won’t ever use (make-up, turmeric, hairbrush, thesaurus). She will never finish (Patricia Highsmith novel, peanut butter, lip balm). And I will never shop for green Virago Classics for her birthday. I will stop finding her hairs. I will stop hearing her breathing.

Everything's better with bacon and red wine!

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there’s always laughter and good red wine.

Or you can broil the meat, fry the onions, stew the garlic in the red wine...and ask me to supper. I'll not care, really, even if your nose is a little shiny, so long as you are self-possessed and sure that wolf or no wolf, your mind is your own and your heart is another's and therefore in the right place.

Some people when they see cheese, chocolate or cake they don't think of calories.

Sometimes I ask myself how autumn smells? My answer: it's the smell of the autumn leaves firework and red wine.

Absolutely zero people go to therapy because yesterday they were sitting in a comfortable chair, eating a perfect pizza, drinking a good glass of red wine, watching a really funny movie. So that’s how Lucas lives, all the time.

Her touch is like doing simple math When she sleeps in the bed, subtracting clothes There is a red ink, like a sparkling red wine, adding colors Dividing body, remembering gods, without multiplying

What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy And in the wither'd field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs

Wadsworth opened the bottle and handed me the cork. What the heck? What do I do now? Take it? Smell it? Lick it? A slight trickle of sweat ran down the nape of my neck as he, Margeaux and Deloris stared at me. “Uh, what am I supposed to do with it?” “Take a sniff, sir. Just to make sure.” “Of course, of course.” Smelled just fine to me and I looked up at him with a big silly grin on my face as he poured a small amount of wine into my glass. I stared up at him. “Aren’t you going to fill my glass?” “Take a sip, sir. Just to make sure.” “Make sure of what?” “That it is to your liking, sir.” It was all I could do from turning red-faced. But I took that sip and smiled again. He then poured the wine into our glasses, nestled the bottle in the silver wine chiller and left. At that point I burst out laughing and my sweet ladies joined me.

There’s nothing healthier than olive oil and red wine. You eat like an Italian and you’ll live forever. It’s not good to be too skinny.

Quite a merry gathering!...What's that? Tea! No thank you! A little red wine, I think for me.

Harry had worked his way through the American Dream and come to the conclusion that is was composed of a good lunch and a deep red wine that could soar.

Both Fen & Helen needed me to choose, to be their one & only when I didn’t want a one & only. I loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread. But that has not happened to me. My loves remain wine to me, yet I become too quickly bread to them.

Clearly we're Sorceri." Sabine gestured at her resplendent self. "Ergo, we'd enjoy some Sorceri wine." "Don't got it." Sabine quirked a red brow. "Do you not? Check with Erol, shifter. He'll have an emergency bottle for me--because whenever I arrive, it's an emergency.

She didn't drink wine, and even if she did, I didn't know if red or white was appropriate for telling a woman that you want to kill her former lover. Do they have greeting cards for that sort of thing?

The beauty of God is in the wind, in the movement of the ocean, it is in the eyes of a woman gazing at her lover, pouring the deep red wine of love from her eyes like two crystal cups. There is a God who dances and who loves and who longs to sing of love...And I mean that God is music; all inclusive, benevolent and life-affirming, unashamed human emotion.

Sweat, scalded meat, puke, blood, smoke and a dozen kinds of bad ale and wine: the bouquet of civilized nightlife

That’s thirty,” Ansel said. “We can count,” Rolfe snipped. Ansel lifted a wine-red brow. “Can you really?” Despite the army marching on them, Lysandra’s mouth twitched upward. Rolfe just rolled his eyes and went back to watching the approaching army.

When some people talk about money They speak as if it were a mysterious lover Who went out to buy milk and never Came back, and it makes me nostalgic For the years I lived on coffee and bread, Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday Like a woman journeying for water From a village without a well, then living One or two nights like everyone else On roast chicken and red wine.

Love and lust are as different from each other as red wine and blue cheese, but because they can also complement one another splendidly, they get conflated with amazing, dumbfounding regularity.

I'm surprised you agreed to let me pour the wine.

Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity. He had asked for a bottle of red wine and had drunk half of it. He refused the help of the Protestant minister the Reverend William Hull who offered to read the Bible with him: he had only two more hours to live and therefore no “time to waste.” He walked the fifty yards from his cell to the execution chamber calm and erect with his hands bound behind him. When the guards tied his ankles and knees he asked them to loosen the bonds so that he could stand straight. “I don’t need that ” he said when the black hood was offered him. He was in complete command of himself nay he was more: he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death. He then proceeded: “After a short while gentlemen we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany long live Argentina long live Austria. I shall not forget them.” In the face of death he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows his memory played him the last trick he was “elated” and he forgot that this was his own funeral. It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us-the lesson of the fearsome word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

Terry loved candlelight dinners and red wine. It was a nice contrast from work. And killing people.

...The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—BLOOD.

Looking to the mountains around us, I saw that the mysterious artist who comes at night had paid us a visit. I wondered how he could paint so many different colors in one night; red, wine, yellow, and rust.

The pleasures of my life here are simple – simple, inexpensive and democratic. A warm hill of Marmande tomatoes on a roadside vendor’s stall. A cold beer on a pavement table of the Café de France – Marie Thérèse inside making me a sandwich au camembert. Munching the knob of a fresh baguette as I wander back from Sainte-Sabine. The farinaceous smell of the white dust raised by a breeze from the driveway. A cuckoo sounding the perfectly silent woods beyond the meadow. A huge grey, cerise, pink, orange and washed-out blue of a sunset seen from my rear terrace. The drilling of the cicadas at noon – the soft dialing-tone of the crickets at dusk slowly gathers. A good book, a hammock and a cold, beaded bottle of blanc sec. A rough red wine and steak frites. The cool, dark, shuttered silence of my bedroom – and, as I go to sleep, the prospect that all this will be available to me again, unchanged, tomorrow.

I have terrible nightmares, you know. Every night when I come home from a long day’s dying, I take off my skin and lay it nicely on my armoire. I take off my bones and hang them up on the hatstand. I set my scythe to washing on the old stove. I eat a nice supper of mouse-and-myrrh soup. Some nights I drink off a nice red wine. White does not agree with me. I lay myself down on a bed of lilies and still, I cannot sleep.

What are you thinking about?’ I said, ‘The same thing you’re thinking about.’ We didn’t even need to say your name.” She frowns down into the red pool of her wine. “It was just a kiss, but God, it hurt like hell.

Nobody went to bed at seven in Paris, even French children. Les enfants stayed up late at night, he had heard, eating with the adults, sipping red wine, and discussing the latest books and films.

She will be busy writing novels. As soon as she had has gotten far enough away from this frighteningly puritanical country, her mind will be set free, and she will be able to turn all of her observations in richly drawn characters and intricately themed stories.” “But what will she eat, dear Grass?” Barnard leaned against the wall, his arms crossing his chest skeptically. “Baguette and red wine, pure art, filthy air. Look at her, she is made of rose petals, and the world will take good care of her. And if it does not, we will have our hearts moved by such an exquisitely gorgeous tragedy.

I remember that summer we walked up the hill, sat atop on the rocks with time to kill; we let sweet red wine set us aglow, then four drunken eyes watched the sunset show I felt the colors enter my veins: warm light-pink shining golden rays; if there was a hue for happiness, I'm sure I saw it with you then

Ever since, in the U.K. they banned smoking in public places, I've never enjoyed a drinks party ever again. And the reason, I only worked out just the other day, is when you go to a drinks party and you stand up and you hold a glass of red wine and you talk endlessly to people, you don't actually want to spend all the time talking. It's really, really tiring. Sometimes you just want to stand there silently, alone with your thoughts. Sometimes you just want to stand in the corner and stare out of the window. Now the problem is, when you can't smoke, if you stand and stare out of the window on your own, you're an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand and stare out of the window on your own with a cigarette, you're a fucking philosopher.

I love your lips when they're wet with wine and red with wicked desire

All my mania for culture, for ‘really good’ things, for knowing about jazz recordings and red wine and Danish furniture, even about Keats and Shakespeare and James Baldwin, what if it’s all a form of vanity, or even worse, a little bandage over the initial wound of my origins? I have put between myself and my parents such a gulf of sophistication that it’s impossible for them to touch me now or to reach me at all.

Is my mother right?” Rahela murmured. “Are men useless? They don’t take out the trash, they don’t rescue the damsels. The only thing a villainess should do at a party is make catty remarks and spill red wine on the heroine’s dress! I never get a moment’s peace to make catty remarks.

Simple game—he’d fill a wineglass with one of his expensive reds and set it on the edge of the table. Then he would fuck me. Hard.” Nora grinned as Wesley flinched. “If I thrashed too much, or fought him and knocked the glass off…then the wine wasn’t the only red that we spilled that night.

I ride over my beautiful ranch. Betwen my legs is a beautiful horse. The air is wine. The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain, wisps of sea fog are stealing. The afternoon sun smolders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive.

His brow is seamed with line and scar; His cheek is red and dark as wine; The fires as of a Northern star Beneath his cap of sable shine. His right hand, bared of leathern glove, Hangs open like an iron gin, You stoop to see his pulses move, To hear the blood sweep out and in. He looks some king, so solitary In earnest thought he seems to stand, As if across a lonely sea He gazed impatient of the land. Out of the noisy centuries The foolish and the fearful fade; Yet burn unquenched these warrior eyes, Time hath not dimmed, nor death dismayed.

He realised at once that a mistake had been made: he had been sent the wrong hangover. Somewhere in northern Rhodesia there was a bull elephant who had got drunk on fermented marula fruit, rampaged through a nearby village, and fallen asleep in a ditch, and was now pleasantly surprised to find itself greeting the day with only the mild headache that follows a couple of bottles of good red wine… Perhaps if he got in touch with the relevant authorities he could get this unfortunate little mix-up corrected, but he would have to do so without moving his head or opening his eyes. Otherwise he would die from the pain.

If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco.

Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel; and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another’s heads, the lighted, ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair. In the coastline’s haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel’s withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees’ jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed. Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.

This one day her mother gave her a basket of wine and cake to take to her grandmother because she was ill. Wine and cake? Where's the aspirin? The penicillin? Where's the fruit juice? Peter Rabbit got camomile tea. But wine and cake it was.

The outside of the building was covered with faded poster advertising what was sold, and by the eerie light of the half-moon, the Baudelaires could see that fresh limes, plastic knives, canned meat, white envelopes, mango-flavored candy, red wine, leather wallets, fashion magazines, goldfish bowls, sleeping bags, roasted figs, cardboard boxes, controversial vitamins, and many other things were available inside the store. Nowhere on the building, however, was there a poster advertising help, which is really what the Baudelaires needed.

The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine… While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you’re making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might’ve thrown them out with last spring’s cleaning. It’s snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing.

You'll want all your strength for the wedding night." I cannot think why I should need strength," she said, ignoring a host of spine-tingling images rising in her mind's eye. "All I have to do is lie there." "Naked," he said grimly. "Truly?" She shot him a glance from under her lashes. "Well, if I must, I must, for you have the advantage of experience in these matters. Still, I do wish you'd told me sooner. I should not have put the modiste to so much trouble about the negligee." "The what?" "It was ghastly expensive," she said, "but the silk is as fine as gossamer, and the eyelet work about the neckline is exquisite. Aunt Louisa was horrified. She said only Cyprians wear such things, and it leaves nothing to the imagination." Jessica heard him suck in his breath, felt the muscular thigh tense against hers. "But if it were left to Aunt Louisa," she went on,"I should be covered from my chin to my toes in thick cotton ruffled with monstrosities with little bows and rosebuds. Which is absurd, when an evening gown reveals far more, not to mention--" "What color?" he asked. His low voice had roughened. "Wine red," she said, "With narrow black ribbons threaded through the neckline. Here." She traced a plunging U over her bosom. "And there's the loveliest openwork over my...well, here." She drew her finger over the curve of her breast a bare inch above the nipple. "And openwork on the right side of the skirt. From here" --she pointed to her hip--"down to the hem. And I bought---" "Jess." Her name was a strangled whisper. "--slippers to match," she continued." Black mules with--" "Jess." In one furious flurry of motion he threw down the reins and hauled her into his lap.

My life was writ in red, in blood and wine.

My favorite of all God's gifts takes my hand, and the contact flows through all of me, singing in my veins like red wine.

My favorite part about cooking is drinking red wine while I do it.

Red wine is different from white. Removing the grape skin does all the difference.

Glory sipped her second glass of red wine, impatient for the slight buzz that made her edges blur.

Personal style is my mom, after some red wine, walking like she intends to restore order and beauty to the world with her posture alone.

I hover over the expensive Scotch and then the Armagnac, but finally settle on a glass of rich red claret. I put it near my nose and nearly pass out. It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancient shutters and long, wicked afternoons in a four-poster bed. It's not a wine, it's a life, right there in the glass.

The sidewalks were haunted by dust ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up, swung them about, and gentled them down in a warm spice on the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strol- lers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes every- where, crusting slumberless night watchmen and irritable dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spon- taneous combustion at three in the morning. Dawn, then, was a time where things changed element for element. Air ran like hot spring waters nowhere, with no sound. The lake was a quantity of steam very still and deep over valleys of fish and sand held baking under its serene vapors. Tar was poured licorice in the streets, red bricks were brass and gold, roof tops were paved with bronze. The high- tension wires were lightning held forever, blazing, a threat above the unslept houses. The cicadas sang louder and yet louder. The sun did not rise, it overflowed.

Red. Red, the colour of the Regency, scrawled over with the iconography of the border forts, growing, fluttering. These were the banners of Ravenel. Not only the banners, but men and riders, flowing over the hilltop like wine from an over-full cup, staining and darkening its slopes, and spreading.

I’d love to tearfully absorb you in every way and I’d love to play with your hair, read your eyes, feel disarmed in your presence. I’d love to experience a seizure of full-silenced tenderness with you and at the same time dwell on your Dionysian idiosyncrasy of red, slightly heated wine, constant passion and chaos; How can I even imprison this desire into mere letters structured together in order to form a coherent meaning? There is no meaning. Darling! Darling! You can flash “meaning” down the toilet if you wish. Still, I’d love to share a life full of richness with you: Richness not in terms of events, incidents, facts or experiences; but richness in terms of a colourful, adventurous, enthusiastically unraveling life. I’d love to lose all privileges of existence as long as I might have a small chance of walking on water with you.

How dare Henry come into Alex's house looking like the goddamn James Bond offspring that he is, drink red wine with the prime minister, and act like he didn't slip Alex the tongue and ghost him for a month.

I do know I can lie awake all night and it feels as if someone is cutting out my stomach the pain of having lost her is so awful. And I am angry that I was made to choose, that both Fen & Helen needed me to choose, to be their one & only when I didn’t want a one & only. I loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread. But that has not happened to me. My loves remain wine to me, yet I become too quickly bread to them. It was unfair, the way I had to decide one way or another in Marseille. Perhaps I made the conventional choice, the easy way for my work, my reputation, and of course for a child. A child that does not come.

Greta considered her own behavior around red flags. Her habit was not to ignore them so much as to ingest them, a somewhat laborious mental production that involved placing them in a stockpot with butter, herbs, and mirepoix; cooking over low heat without browning; adding red meat, additional red flags, a jug of red wine; and voilà, four hours at a lazy simmer later, an extremely rich red-flag stew that she forked into her mouth every day like a fucking moron, sometimes for years on end.

Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick, Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick, Youth must be foolish and mirthful and blind, Gaze not before and glance not behind, Mark not the shadow that darkens the way- Regret not the glitter of any lost day, But laugh with no reason except the red wine, For youth must be youthful and foolish and blind!

Does cookie dough ice cream go better with red or white wine?

Two kisses in one kiss was all it took, a comfort, a warmth, perhaps temporary, perhaps false, but reassuring nonetheless, and mine, and theirs, ours, all three of us giggling, insane giggles and laughter with still more kisses on the way, and I remember a brief instant then, out of the blue, when I suddenly glimpsed my own father, a rare but oddly peaceful recollection, as if he actually approved of my play in the way he himself had always laughed and played, great updrafts of light, burning off distant plateaus of bistre & sage, throwing him up like an angel, high above the red earth, deep into the sparkling blank, the tender sky that never once let him down, preserving his attachment to youth, propriety and kindness, his plane almost, but never quite, outracing his whoops of joy, trailing him in his sudden turn to the wind, followed then by a near vertical climb up to the angles of the sun, and I was barely eight and still with him and yes, that was the thought that flickered madly through me, a brief instant of communion, possessing me with warmth and ageless ease, causing me to smile again and relax as if memory alone could lift the heart like the wind lifts a wing, and so I renewed my kisses with even greater enthusiasm, caressing and in turn devouring their dark lips, dark with wine and fleeting love, an ancient memory love had promised but finally never gave, until there were too many kisses to count or remember, and the memory of love proved not love at all and needed a replacement, which our bodies found, and then the giggles subsided, and the laughter dimmed, and darkness enfolded all of us and we gave away our childhood for nothing and we died and condoms littered the floor and Christina threw up in the sink and Amber chuckled a little and kissed me a little more, but in a way that told me it was time to leave.

Oh, you're one of those'. Shaking her head, she poured the wine. 'Figures.' 'One of those what?' 'One of those people who drink one glass of red wine a night because it's healthy, not because it tastes good and makes you feel like you can get through another day without hitting someone with a frying pan.

Unlike the characters in the book, however, these different sorts of people don’t seem to mix well. It is like the salad dressing Jessamyn makes: a little bit of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and some red wine vinegar. If whipped, they combine. But leave them to their own devices and they will sort themselves out again. I don’t really understand this. When you have so many people, each one inevitably fascinating, why would you limit yourself to only those like you?

The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.

...after rare beef and wine, when the lobes turn red, was the time to ask favours or tell bad news.

What appears most disquieting to me in isolation is the dilemma of how to use time. There is either too much or too little of it; we either live inside painfully contracting horizons, or feel ourselves isolated in the vastness of space. I seem to have lived with the palm of my hand balanced on the tip of a knife, writing what in theory I would call the Preface to a Future Book. And the relation of time to creation should always appear like that, a ratio that describes the fullness of energy brought to a particular stage of one's life, so that each work is a preface to a stage at which one has still to arrive, the logical extension of which is death. I live for the blaze of metaphor that unites incongruities. The red wine-stain on my page is like an intoxicant to the dance of words. It is a little ritual I undertake, this sprinkling of wine-spots on paper.

And even if you clutch a thousand stars, she’s strong enough to carry myriads more. I am still here. The dream is over. I am alone – like red wine, my hot blood is seething. You are not here and were so near and we were such sweet tempestuous fire.

Magic carpet rides, rune magic, Ali Baba and visions of the Holy Mother, astral travel and the future in the dregs of a glass of red wine. Buddha. Frodo's journey into Mordor. The transubstantiation of the sacrament. Dorothy and Toto. The Easter Bunny. Space aliens. The Thing in the closet. The Resur-rection and the Life at the turn of a card ... I've believed them all at one time or another. Or pretended to. Or pretended not to. And now? What do I believe right now? 'I believe that being happy is the only important thing,' I told him at last. Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the hear. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.

An interesting thing, the bison and the cow. So similar. Two branches of the same tree, though entirely different from one another. And separate as they are, divided as the two species can be, they can live alongside each other just fine. Mingle their herds. They can even breed.” Next to me, Tiberias coughs, almost choking on a piece of food. My cheeks flame hot. Evangeline laughs into her hand. Farley finishes the bottle of wine.

Harriet," he said, "would you care for a glass of wine?" "Oh, Jesus God, yes." "I didn't ask before because I thought it might be, uh, inappropriate for the occasion." "I can think of no occasion," Harriet said, "including funerals, nuclear summits, and parent-teacher meetings, that could not be vastly improved by a full-bodied red.

He worked for two months without pause. His functional day was twenty-two hours. He would try to go to sleep in a kind of buzz, and awaken two hours later with his thoughts exactly where he had left them. His diet was strictly coffee. (Even when healthy and at peace, Feigenbaum subsisted exclusively on the reddest possible meat, coffee, and red wine. His friends speculated that he must be getting his vitamins from cigarettes.) In the end, a doctor called it off. He prescribed a modest regimen of Valium and an enforced vacation. But by then Feigenbaum had created a universal theory.

Persephone Speaks “I asked him for it. For the blood, for the rust, for the sin. I didn’t want the pearls other girls talked about, or the fine marble of palaces, or even the roses in the mouth of servants. I wanted pomegranates— I wanted darkness, I wanted him. So I grabbed my king and ran away to a land of death, where I reigned and people whispered that I’d been dragged. I’ll tell you I’ve changed. I’ll tell you, the red on my lips isn’t wine. I hope you’ve heard of horns, but that isn’t half of it. Out of an entire kingdom he kneels only to me, calls me Queen, calls me Mercy. Mama, Mama, I hope you get this. Know the bed is warm and our hearts are cold, know never have I been better than when I am here. Do not send flowers, we’ll throw them in the river. ‘Flowers are for the dead’, ‘least that’s what the mortals say. I’ll come back when he bores me, but Mama, not today.

Agree!” This came from Sandra. “Roses are red, violets are blue, rhyming is hard. Wine.

You grew older today, but did you age as well? If you drank a few cups of green tea, had five servings of fruits and vegetables, exercised for at least 30 minutes at your target heart rate, took nutritional supplements optimized for your age and health situation, spent quality time with close friends and loved ones, consumed a glass of red wine, had a romantic (and sensual!) time with your spouse or significant other, and got 8 hours of quality sleep, then you probably aged very little if at all.

A merchant came by a few years ago—he told me there was a mortal High King who had set himself up there. But I heard a whisper on the wind recently that said he'd been deposed by a young woman with wine-red hair who now calls herself their High Queen.

Demi-glace. There are a lot of ways to make demi-glace, but I recommend you simply take your already reduced meat stock, add some red wine, toss in some shallots and fresh thyme and a bay leaf and peppercorns, and slowly, slowly simmer it and reduce it again until it coats a spoon. Strain. Freeze this stuff in an ice-cube tray, pop out a cube or two as needed, and you are in business — you can rule the world. And remember, when making a sauce with demi-glace, don't forget to monter au beurre. Chervil,

The noise of drinking was exhilarating. Champagne corks popped and the pale, chrysanthemum-coloured liquid, whispering gleefully with bubbles, hissed into the glasses; heavy red wine glupped into the goblets, thick and crimson as the blood of some mythical monster, and a swirling wreath of pink bubbles formed on the surface; the frosty white wine tiptoed into the glasses, shrilling, gleaming, now like diamonds, now like topaz; the ouzo lay transparent and innocent as the edge of a mountain pool until the water splashed in and the whole glass curdled like a conjuring trick, coiling and blurring into a summer cloud of moonstone white.

What are you making?" he asked me. "Eggplant with a pomegranate walnut sauce." It was nice to be able to answer at least something with certainty. I turned the eggplant over in the pan. The sauce was just a mixture of pomegranate juice, good red wine vinegar, garlic, red pepper flakes, and salt. Nothing else. It was hard for me to resist embellishing recipes that called for so little, but the complexity of the juice transformed what would otherwise be the world's most basic support ingredients into a symphony of flavor.

Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;—the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!

My Aunt used to say, if you don't fit in, fool everyone until you do. She also said to keep your passport renewed, to pair red wines with meats and whites with everything else, to find work that is fulfilling to your heart as well as your head, to never forget to fall in love whenever you can find it because love is nothing if not a matter of timing, and to chase the moon. Always, always chase the moon.

It lands halfway down the skirt. The red wine against the green silk makes it look like Gaia, the primordial earth mother, is having her period. I know I should feel guilty. Contrite. I should be rushing to the fridge and grabbing a bottle of club soda before the stain sets, or rushing Viveca’s dress down the street to that dry cleaning place. But I’m not contrite. I’m a little giddy, in fact. I pour another mug of wine and throw it at the other three dresses. In some places the wine seeps in and it dribbles down to the hems in others. I do it again: pour, splash. I feel like Jackson Pollock must have felt, except I’m not dribbling paint; I’m staining beauty with blood.

Rage swallowed remorse. Rage drop-kicked self-pity. Rage murdered sorrow. And then, like blood-red wine tucked into the refrigerator, rage chilled to become cold, calculating anger. Anger was a creature that arrived on her doorstep with a suitcase full of strategy and vengeance. It tipped its hat at her and hopped into her brain. It knocked on the Logic Department's door. It found a broken mirror somewhere in the crevices between her hippocampus and her hypothalamus, and it was wondering if somebody had misplaced it. No retaliation? It scoffed. Think again, missy.

Laura made a great chili. She used lean meat, dark kidney beans, carrots cut small, a bottle or so of dark beer, and freshly sliced hot peppers. She would let the chili cook for a while, then add red wine, lemon juice and a pitch of fresh dill, and, finally, measure out and add her chili powders. On more than one occasion Shadow had tried to get her to show him how she made it: he would watch everything she did, from slicing the onions and dropping them into the olive oil at the bottom of the pot. He had even written down the recipe, ingredient by ingredient, and he had once made Laura's chili for himself on a weekend when she had been out of town. It had tasted okay-it was certainly edible, but it had not been Laura's chili.

They wind up at the kind of Italian restaurant that offers a trough-size bowl of spaghetti and meatballs and a giant basket of bread for a grand total of a dollar fifty. “Meals come with either a glass of red wine of unspecified variety,” Mark says, studying the menu, “or a bowl of ice cream. Wine or ice cream. In what universe is that a reasonable choice? It’s like – football or a haircut. Trombones or a spoon.” “You could get both for an extra seventy-five cents,” Eddie suggests. “That’s not the point. I don’t want either. It’s that the binary of wine and ice cream shouldn’t exist.

Somewhere en route to Port Via in the New Hebrides, for my last meal I serve dinner the way I've always dreamed. Anybody caught buttering their bread before breaking it, I promise to shoot them. Anybody who drinks their beverage with food still in their mouth will also be shot. Anybody caught spooning toward themself will be shot. Anybody caught without a napkin in their lap- Anybody caught using their fingers to move their food- Anybody who begins eating before everybody is seved- Anybody who blows on food to cool it- Anybody who talks with food in their mouth- Anybody who drinks white wine holding their glass by the bowl or drinks red wine holding their glass by the stem- You will each of you get a bullet in the head. We are 30,000 feet above earth, going 455 miles per hour. We're at a pinnacle of human achievement, we are going to eat this meal as civilized human beings.

I He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved, And murdered in her bed. He walked amongst the Trial

What is an oyster if not the perfect food? It requires no preparation or cooking. Cooking would be an affront. It provides its own sauce. It’s a living thing until seconds before disappearing down your throat, so you know – or should know – that it’s fresh. It appears on your plate as God created it: raw, unadorned. A squeeze of lemon, or maybe a little mignonette sauce (red wine vinegar, cracked black pepper, some finely chopped shallot), about as much of an insult as you might care to tender against this magnificent creature. It is food at its most primeval and glorious, untouched by time or man. A living thing, eaten for sustenance and pleasure, the same way our knuckle-dragging forefathers ate them. And they have, for me anyway, the added mystical attraction of all that sense memory – the significance of being the first food to change my life. I blame my first oyster for everything I did after: my decision to become a chef, my thrill-seeking, all my hideous screwups in pursuit of pleasure. I blame it all on that oyster. In a nice way, of course.

I dreamed I stood upon a little hill, And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed Like a waste garden, flowering at its will With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed Black and unruffled; there were white lilies A few, and crocuses, and violets Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun. And there were curious flowers, before unknown, Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades Of Nature's willful moods; and here a one That had drunk in the transitory tone Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades Of grass that in an hundred springs had been Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars, And watered with the scented dew long cupped In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt, A grey stone wall. o'ergrown with velvet moss Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair. And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across The garden came a youth; one hand he raised To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes Were clear as crystal, naked all was he, White as the snow on pathless mountains frore, Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes A marble floor, his brow chalcedony. And he came near me, with his lips uncurled And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth, And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend, Come I will show thee shadows of the world And images of life. See from the South Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.' And lo! within the garden of my dream I saw two walking on a shining plain Of golden light. The one did joyous seem And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids And joyous love of comely girl and boy, His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy; And in his hand he held an ivory lute With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair, And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute, And round his neck three chains of roses were. But he that was his comrade walked aside; He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight, And yet again unclenched, and his head Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death. A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold With the device of a great snake, whose breath Was fiery flame: which when I did behold I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth, Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.' Then straight the first did turn himself to me And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame, But I am Love, and I was wont to be Alone in this fair garden, till he came Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.' Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will, I am the love that dare not speak its name.

Gail loved to talk about how stressed she was. She would do this thing where we'd be walking in the hallway, and suddenly she'd stop in her tracks, rub both of her temples with her index and middle fingers, and theatrically let out a deep guttural moan: "Mooooog." "Mooog. Minz. I am just so stressed out," she'd say. "I just want to go home, open a bottle of red wine, draw up a hot bath, light some candles and listen to David Gray." A note about me: I do not think stress is a legitimate topic of conversation, in public anyway. No one ever wants to hear how stressed out anyone else is, because most of the time everyone is stressed out. Going on and on in detail about how stressed out I am isn't conversation. It'll never lead anywhere. No one is going to say, "Wow, Mindy, you really have it especially bad. I have heard some stories of stress, but this just takes the cake.

The veselija has come down to them from a far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the memory all his days.

the first archer lets his arrow fly, soaring over the crowd and hitting it's mark in a shower of sparks. The bonfire ignites in an eruption of yellow flame. Then second chime follows. the second archer sends his arrow into the yellow flames, and they become a clear sky-blue. A third chime with a third arrow. and the flames are a warm bright pink. Flames the color of a ripe pumpkin follow the fourth arrow. A fifth, and the flames are scarlet-red. A sixth brings a deeper, sparkling crimson. Seven, and the fire is soaked in a color like an incandescent wine. Eight, and the flames are shimmering violet. Nine, and violet shift to indigo. A tenth chime, a tenth arrow, and the bonfire turns deepest midnight blue.

There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the odor of cooked rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the tarry, wine-spilled smell of the big skin hung beside the door, hung by the neck and all the four legs extended, wine drawn from a plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little onto the earth of the floor, settling the dust smell; out now from the odors of different herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches from the ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now from the copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat died in the clothing (acrid and gray the man sweat, sweet and sickly the dried brushed-off lather of horse sweat, of the men at the table, Robert Jordan breathed deeply of the clear night air of the mountains that smelled of the pines and of the dew on the grass in the meadow by the stream.

A glass or two of red wine may be good for your heart but not for your microbiome. Studies show that just one drink per day in women and two in men can induce dysbiosis and bacterial overgrowth. Levels of good bacteria like Lactobacillus fall, while potential pathogens rise, leading to an increase in toxins and other chemicals that can cause inflammation, damage the liver, and increase permeability of the gut. Most of the overgrowth happens in the small intestine and can lead to malnourishment because the excess bacteria consume the nutrients that the small intestine would normally absorb. Some studies report an incidence of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) in alcoholics that’s three times that of the general population.

These things matter to me, Daniel, says the man with six days to live. They are sitting on the porch in the last light. These things matter to me, son. The way the hawks huddle their shoulders angrily against hissing snow. Wrens whirring in the bare bones of bushes in winter. The way swallows and swifts veer and whirl and swim and slice and carve and curve and swerve. The way that frozen dew outlines every blade of grass. Salmonberries thimbleberries cloudberries snowberries elderberries salalberries gooseberries. My children learning to read. My wife's voice velvet in my ear at night in the dark under the covers. Her hair in my nose as we slept curled like spoons. The sinuous pace of rivers and minks and cats. Fresh bread with too much butter. My children's hands when they cup my face in their hands. Toys. Exuberance. Mowing the lawn. Tiny wrenches and screwdrivers. Tears of sorrow, which are the salt sea of the heart. Sleep in every form from doze to bone-weary. Pay stubs. Trains. The shivering ache of a saxophone and the yearning of a soprano. Folding laundry hot from the dryer. A spotless kitchen floor. The sound of bagpipes. The way horses smell in spring. Red wines. Furnaces. Stone walls. Sweat. Postcards on which the sender has written so much that he or she can barely squeeze in the signature. Opera on the radio. Bathrobes, back rubs. Potatoes. Mink oil on boots. The bands at wedding receptions. Box-elder bugs. The postman's grin. Linen table napkins. Tent flaps. The green sifting powdery snow of cedar pollen on my porch every year. Raccoons. The way a heron labors through the sky with such a vast elderly dignity. The cheerful ears of dogs. Smoked fish and the smokehouses where fish are smoked. The way barbers sweep up circles of hair after a haircut. Handkerchiefs. Poems read aloud by poets. Cigar-scissors. Book marginalia written with the lightest possible pencil as if the reader is whispering to the writer. People who keep dead languages alive. Fresh-mown lawns. First-basemen's mitts. Dish-racks. My wife's breasts. Lumber. Newspapers folded under arms. Hats. The way my children smelled after their baths when they were little. Sneakers. The way my father's face shone right after he shaved. Pants that fit. Soap half gone. Weeds forcing their way through sidewalks. Worms. The sound of ice shaken in drinks. Nutcrackers. Boxing matches. Diapers. Rain in every form from mist to sluice. The sound of my daughters typing their papers for school. My wife's eyes, as blue and green and gray as the sea. The sea, as blue and green and gray as her eyes. Her eyes. Her.

People ask me: Why do you write about food? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do? They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honour of my craft. The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straighly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it...and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied...and it is all one. I tell about myself and how I ate bread on a lasting hillside, or drank red wine in a room now blown to bits, and it happens without my willing it that I am telling too about the people with me then, and their other deeper needs for love and happiness. There is food in the bowl, and more often than not, because of what honesty I have, there is nourishment in the heart, to feed the wilder, more insistent hungers. We must eat. If, in the face of that dread fact, we can find other nourishment, and tolerance and compassion for it, we'll be no less full of human dignity. There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love?

I remember that pomegranate well- the leathery red skin, the fleshy weight of it in my hand promising wine-sweet clusters of ruby fruit. As I lifted it off the pile, I imagined the satisfying crunch, the release of tangy perfume, the juices glazing my lips and running down my chin. Ah, that biblical fruit with its poignant umbilical tip, choice of the gods and food of the dead.

You’re being awful generous with your late husband’s possessions,” he told her. She grinned back at him. “You’ve loosened me up maybe? Besides, you’ve already slept with his wife, why not drive his truck? Kira drank his 1925 Chateau Feytit Clinet red wide today.” Did he look pale? Noah swore he could feel himself blanch. His 1925 Chateau Feytit Clinet? No. She hadn’t shared that with Kira Richards. The one person in the world besides Sabella who knew exactly how horrified he’d be to hear that Sabella had dipped into his treasure trove of wines? “He had a 1925 Feytit Clinet?” He almost wheezed. How he kept his voice calm and level he didn’t know. Hell, his training had just been shot to hell. “And you shared it with Ian Richard’s wife?” “He had lots of wine.” She turned and shot him a look over her shoulder. “Maybe one of these nights I’ll share the other one with you. Do you want me to meet you at the garage with the pickup? It won’t take me long.” Let her drive his pickup? Had she lost her damned mind? “I can leave the cycle here.” He nodded to the back drive as he stepped to the porch. “I’ll just help you lock up.” “Okay.” There was a swing to her hips that almost had his tongue hanging out of his mouth. And he almost—only almost—forgot about the wine and the truck. She drank his wine? Drove his truck? And Rory hadn’t warned him ahead of time?

The only circumstance under which Mo Xi could imagine amiably sharing a jug of wine with Gu Mang was in a cemetery, with Gu Mang buried in the earth, and himself standing upon it. Then he might talk to the man like he once had, and place a bouquet of red peonies shaped from spiritual energy on his grave.

But there we are, two dozen grins stained red from the wine, waving at the camera like idiots. Blake is in the back row, his napkin tied around his head like a bandana. I have a hand on Jamie’s shoulder right in the center of the shot. His smile is just as relaxed and genuine as the day I met him. And I look…centered. It’s not a word I’ve ever used to describe myself before. But everything I ever wanted is in that photo—the man of my dreams, and my teammates. I’ve left my smug smile behind in favor of one that’s so shiny I hardly recognize myself. But it’s me up there for sure. It’s us. And it’s perfect.

At ten seconds before the hour, they raise their bows and aim the flaming arrows at the waiting well of curling iron. As the clock begins to chime near the gates, the first archer lets his arrow fly, soaring over the crowd and hitting its mark in a shower of sparks. The bonfire ignites in an eruption of yellow flame. Then the second chime follows, the second archer sends his arrow into the yellow flames, and they become a clear sky-blue. A third chime with a third arrow, and the flames are a warm bright pink. Flames the color of a ripe pumpkin follow the fourth arrow. A fifth, and the flames are scarlet-red. A sixth brings a deeper, sparkling crimson. Seven, and the fire is soaked in a color like incandescent wine. Eight, and the flames are shimmering violet. Nine, and the violet shifts to indigo. A tenth chime, a tenth arrow, and the bonfire turns deepest midnight blue. On the penultimate chime, the dancing flames change from blue to black, and for a moment, it is difficult to discount the fire from its cauldron. And on the final strike, the dark flames are replaced with a blinding white, a shower of sparks falling like snowflakes around it. Huge curls of dense white smoke swirl up into the night sky.

Thereforeonyourjourneybesuretotakegoldencupsfull of the sweet drink oflife, red wine, and give it to dead matter, so that it can win life back The dead matter will change into black serpents. Do not be frightened, the serpents will immediately put out the sun of your days, and a night with wonderful will-o'-the-wisps will come over YOU. 140 Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell. . What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of Hell is when you can no longer attain what you could attain. Hell is when you must thinlc and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your havingtoisalsoawantingto,andthatyouyourselfareresponsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful. But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell. That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness is simplicityandleadstodeath.141Butambiguityisthewayoflife.142 If the left foot does not move, then the right one does, and you move. The God wills this.143 You say: the Christian God is unequivocal, he is 10ve.l44 But what is more ambiguous than love? Love is the way of life, but your love is only on the way oflife ifyou have a left and a right. Nothing is easier than to play at ambiguity and nothing is more difficult than living ambiguity. He who plays is a child; his God is old and dies. He who lives is awakened; his God is young and goes on. He who plays hides from the inner death. He who lives feels the going onward and immortality. So leave the play to the players. Let fall what wants to fall; if you stop it, it will sweep you away. There is a true love that does not concern itself with neighbors.

He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat’s black, dripping, sloping sides.

Morning struck with the promise of a blazing summer's day. More of a threat than a promise. When you watch from a shaded veranda, sipping iced wine as the Red March summer paints lemons onto garden boughs—that's promise. When you have to toil a whole day in the dust to cover a thumb's distance on the map—that's threat.

Passengers drank and smoked. Both; a lot. This was a significant source of profit for Cunard. The company laid in a supply of 150 cases of Black & White Whiskey, 50 cases of Canadian Club Whiskey, and 50 of Plymouth Gin; also, 15 cases each of an eleven-year-old French red wine, a Chambertin, and an eleven-year-old French white, a Chablis, and twelve barrels of stout and ten of ale. Cunard stockpiled thirty thousand “Three Castles” cigarettes and ten thousand Manila cigars. The ship also sold cigars from Havana and American cigarettes made by Phillip Morris. For the many passengers who brought pipes, Cunard acquired 560 pounds of loose Capstan tobacco—“navy cut”—and 200 pounds of Lord Nelson Flake, both in 4-ounce tins. Passengers also brought their own. Michael Byrne, a retired New York merchant and former deputy sheriff traveling in first class, apparently planned to spend a good deal of the voyage smoking. He packed 11 pounds of Old Rover Tobacco and three hundred cigars. During the voyage, the scent of combusted tobacco was ever present, especially after dinner.

Choose a good vintage,” Cheat said to Kestrel. “You’ll know the best.” As she left the room, his eyes followed her, glittering. She returned with a clearly labeled bottle of Valorian wine dated to the year of the Herran War. She placed it on the table in front of the two seated men. Arin’s jaw set, and he shook his head slightly. Cheat lost his grin. “This was the best,” Kestrel said. “Pour.” Cheat shoved his glass toward her. She uncorked the bottle and poured--and kept pouring, even as the red wine flowed over the glass’s rim, across the table, and onto Cheat’s lap. He jumped to his feet, swatting wine from his fine stolen clothes. “Damn you!” “You said I should pour. You didn’t say I should stop.” Kestrel wasn’t sure what would have happened next if Arin hadn’t intervened. “Cheat,” he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop playing games with what is mine.

The sea was smooth, warm and as dark as black velvet, not a ripple disturbing the surface. The distant coastline of Albania was dimly outlined by a faint reddish glow in the sky. Gradually, minute by minute, this faint glow deepened and grew brighter, spreading across the sky. Then suddenly the moon, enormous, wine-red, edged herself over the fretted battlement of mountains, and threw a straight blood-red path across the dark sea. The owls appeared now, drifting from tree to tree as silently as flakes of soot, hooting in astonishment as the moon rose higher and higher, turning to pink, then gold, and finally riding in a nest of stars, like a silver bubble.

Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.

The Immortals I killed them, but they would not die. Yea! all the day and all the night For them I could not rest or sleep, Nor guard from them nor hide in flight. Then in my agony I turned And made my hands red in their gore. In vain - for faster than I slew They rose more cruel than before. I killed and killed with slaughter mad; I killed till all my strength was gone. And still they rose to torture me, For Devils only die in fun. I used to think the Devil hid In women’s smiles and wine’s carouse. I called him Satan, Balzebub. But now I call him, dirty louse.

... WHEN ONE LOOKS INTO THE DARKNESS THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE... Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise In Druid vapour and make the torches dim; Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him Who met Fand walking among flaming dew By a grey shore where the wind never blew, And lost the world and Emer for a kiss; And him who drove the gods out of their liss, And till a hundred morns had flowered red Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead; And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods: And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods, And sought through lands and islands numberless years, Until he found, with laughter and with tears, A woman of so shining loveliness That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress, A little stolen tress. I, too, await The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die? Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows, Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose? Out of sight is out of mind: Long have man and woman-kind, Heavy of will and light of mood, Taken away our wheaten food, Taken away our Altar stone; Hail and rain and thunder alone, And red hearts we turn to grey, Are true till time gutter away. ... the common people are always ready to blame the beautiful.

The silver trumpets rang across the Dome; The people knelt upon the ground with awe; And borne upon the necks of men I saw, Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome. Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam, And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red, Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head; In splendour and in light the Pope passed home. My heart stole back across wide wastes of years To One who wandered by a lonely sea; And sought in vain for any place of rest: “Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest, I, only I, must wander wearily, And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.

Have I told you I can’t read contemporary novels anymore? I think it’s because I know too many of the people who write them. I see them all the time at festivals, drinking red wine and talking about who’s publishing who in New York. Complaining about the most boring things in the world—not enough publicity, or bad reviews, or someone else making more money. Who cares? And then they go away and write their sensitive little novels about ‘ordinary life’. The truth is they know nothing about ordinary life. Most of them haven’t so much as glanced up against the real world in decades. These people have been sitting with white linen tablecloths laid out in front of them and complaining about bad reviews since 1983. I just don’t care what they think about ordinary life or ordinary people.

I wish to be remembered for my humor, and my passion, and above all, my ability to go from angel to asshole in 3.5 seconds, but always for something that I truly believe in. I will be one crazy ass grandma. I want you to picture this, I will have red highlights, I will have fuck me heels, I will have a really nice glass of wine that I will have made in my hand, and I will tell anyone who will listen how a smart ass from Doylsetown, Pennslyvania was gonna be a star, and the Billboard fucking Magazine made her woman of the year.

He listened to the hooting of many metal horns, squealing of brakes, the calls of vendors selling red-purple bananas and jungle oranges in their stalls. Colonel Freeleigh's feet began to move, hanging from the edge of his wheel chair, making the motions of a man walking. His eyes squeezed tight. He gave a series of immense sniffs, as if to gain the odors of meats hung on iron hooks in sunshine, cloaked with flies like a mantle of raisins; the smell of stone alleys wet with morning rain. He could feel the sun bum his spiny-bearded cheek, and he was twenty-five years old again, walking, walking, looking, smiling, happy to be alive, very much alert, drinking in colors and smells.

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out into playing fields, the factory, allotments kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry. The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem. I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird – white dove – which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth. One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books. Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up. Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. Little Red-Cap

Child, your lesson for today is to drink wine.” “What ? But teacher, doesn’t the Sun Knight have a low tolerance for drink ?” “The Sun Knight always forgives others, but have you ever really forgiven someone ?” “Nope.” “The Sun Knight always wears a smile, but how many times have you really smiled from the bottom of your heart ?” “Only a few times...” “The Sun Knight is a benevolent spokesperson, but are you really benevolent ?” “...” “Child, if you have a low tolerance for drink, then how are you going to make sure that after drinking, you’ll still be able to maintain the image of the Sun Knight as someone who turns red on the first cup, has a headache with the second cup, and topples over unconscious after the third ? So you see, the idea that the Sun Knight has low tolerance for drink is actually founded on the premise that the Sun Knight cannot be defeated by drink.” This argument might sound really reasonable, but when I think about it carefully, it seems to be full of contradictions as well ! “Drink up, child. You have to drink wine every night for the next month, until you can drink wine like it’s just water.” “...” The year I turned twelve, I became someone who could drink wine as easily as water, an undefeatable drinker, all for the sake of the Sun Knight’s image as a lightweight drinker.

Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass. She says she doesn’t deprive herself, but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork. In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate. I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it. I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so. Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s proportional. As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast. She wanes while my father waxes. His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit." It was the same with his parents; as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks, rotund stomach and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking making space for the entrance of men into their lives not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave. I have been taught accommodation. My brother never thinks before he speaks. I have been taught to filter. “How can anyone have a relationship to food?" He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs. I want to tell say: we come from difference, Jonas, you have been taught to grow out I have been taught to grow in you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much I learned to absorb I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters and I never meant to replicate her, but spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits that’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades. We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit weaving silence in between the threads which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house, skin itching, picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again, Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled. Deciding how many bites is too many How much space she deserves to occupy. Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her, And I don’t want to do either anymore but the burden of this house has followed me across the country I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry". I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza a circular obsession I never wanted but inheritance is accidental still staring at me with wine-stained lips from across the kitchen table.

Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals sails appeared charmed. They blazed red in the day and silver at night, like a magician’s cloak, hinting at mysteries concealed beneath, which Tella planned to uncover that night. Drunken laughter floated above her as Tella delved deeper into the ship’s underbelly in search of Nigel the Fortune-teller. Her first evening on the vessel she’d made the mistake of sleeping, not realizing until the following day that Legend’s performers had switched their waking hours to prepare for the next Caraval. They slumbered in the day and woke after sunset. All Tella had learned her first day aboard La Esmeralda was that Nigel was on the ship, but she had yet to actually see him. The creaking halls beneath decks were like the bridges of Caraval, leading different places at different hours and making it difficult to know who stayed in which room. Tella wondered if Legend had designed it that way, or if it was just the unpredictable nature of magic. She imagined Legend in his top hat, laughing at the question and at the idea that magic had more control than he did. For many, Legend was the definition of magic. When she had first arrived on Isla de los Sueños, Tella suspected everyone could be Legend. Julian had so many secrets that she’d questioned if Legend’s identity was one of them, up until he’d briefly died. Caspar, with his sparkling eyes and rich laugh, had played the role of Legend in the last game, and at times he’d been so convincing Tella wondered if he was actually acting. At first sight, Dante, who was almost too beautiful to be real, looked like the Legend she’d always imagined. Tella could picture Dante’s wide shoulders filling out a black tailcoat while a velvet top hat shadowed his head. But the more Tella thought about Legend, the more she wondered if he even ever wore a top hat. If maybe the symbol was another thing to throw people off. Perhaps Legend was more magic than man and Tella had never met him in the flesh at all. The boat rocked and an actual laugh pierced the quiet. Tella froze. The laughter ceased but the air in the thin corridor shifted. What had smelled of salt and wood and damp turned thick and velvet-sweet. The scent of roses. Tella’s skin prickled; gooseflesh rose on her bare arms. At her feet a puddle of petals formed a seductive trail of red. Tella might not have known Legend’s true name, but she knew he favored red and roses and games. Was this his way of toying with her? Did he know what she was up to? The bumps on her arms crawled up to her neck and into her scalp as her newest pair of slippers crushed the tender petals. If Legend knew what she was after, Tella couldn’t imagine he would guide her in the correct direction, and yet the trail of petals was too tempting to avoid. They led to a door that glowed copper around the edges. She turned the knob. And her world transformed into a garden, a paradise made of blossoming flowers and bewitching romance. The walls were formed of moonlight. The ceiling was made of roses that dripped down toward the table in the center of the room, covered with plates of cakes and candlelight and sparkling honey wine. But none of it was for Tella. It was all for Scarlett. Tella had stumbled into her sister’s love story and it was so romantic it was painful to watch. Scarlett stood across the chamber. Her full ruby gown bloomed brighter than any flowers, and her glowing skin rivaled the moon as she gazed up at Julian. They touched nothing except each other. While Scarlett pressed her lips to Julian’s, his arms wrapped around her as if he’d found the one thing he never wanted to let go of. This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals were as ephemeral as feelings, eventually they would wilt and die, leaving nothing but the thorns.

It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thoasand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. This smoke is more than the day’s breath, more than dark strength--it is an imperial presence that lives and moves. People were crossing the streets and squares, going everywhere. Busses were grinding off, hundreds of them, down the long concrete viaducts, smeared with years’ pitiless use and no pleasure, into haze-gray, grease black, red lead and pale aluminum, between scrap heaps that towered high as blocks of flats, down side-shoving curves into roads clogged with Army convoys, other tall busses and canvas lorries, bicycles and cars, hitching now and then, over it all the enormous gas ruin of the sun among the smokestacks, the barrage balloons, power lines and chimneys brown as aging indoor wood, brown growing deeper, approaching black through an instant-- perhaps the true turn of the sunset-- that is wine to you, wine and comfort. The Moment was 6:43:16 British Double Summer Time: the sky beaten like Death’s drum, still humming, and Slothrop’s cock--say what? yes lookit inside his GI undershorts here’s a sneaky hardon stirring, ready to jump-- well great God where’d that come from? There is in his history, and likely, God help him, in his dossier, a peculiar sensitivity to what is revealed in the sky. (But a harden?)

So he asked her what she’d like to drink. Her choice would be crucial. If she orders a decaf, he thought, I’m getting up and leaving. No one was entitled to drink a decaf when it came to this type of encounter. It’s the least gregarious drink there is. Tea isn’t much better. Just met, and already settling into some kind of dull cocoon. You feel like you’re going to end up spending Sunday afternoons watching TV. Or worse: at the in-laws’. Yes, tea is indisputably in-law territory. Then what? Alcohol? No good for this time of day. You could have qualms about a woman who starts drinking right away like that. Even a glass of red wine isn’t going to cut it. François kept waiting for her to choose what she’d like to drink, and this was how he kept up his liquid analysis of first impressions of women. What was left now? Coke, or any type of soda … no, not possible, that didn’t say woman at all. Might as well ask for a straw, too, while she was at it. Finally he decided that juice was good. Yes, juice, that was nice. It’s friendly and not too aggressive. You can sense the kind of sweet, well-balanced woman who would make such a choice. But which juice? Better to avoid the great classics: apple, orange, too popular. It would have to be only slightly original without being completely eccentric. Papaya or guava—frightening. No, the best is choosing something in between, like apricot. That’s it. Apricot juice: perfect. If she chooses it, I’ll marry her, thought François. At that precise instant, Natalie raised her head from the menu, as if emerging from a long reflection. It was the same reflection in which the stranger opposite her had just been absorbed. “I’ll have a juice…” “…?” “Apricot juice, I guess.” He looked at her as if she were a violation of reality.

I thought leaving home would be a liberation. I thought university would be a dance party. I thought I would live in a room vined with fairy lights; hang arabesque tapestries up on the wall. I thought scattered beneath my bed would be a combination of Kafka, coffee grounds, and a lover’s old boxer shorts. I thought I would spend my evenings drinking cheap red wine and talking about the Middle East. I thought on weekends we might go to Cassavetes marathons at the independent cinema. I thought I would know all the good Korean places in town. I thought I would know a person who was into healing crystals and another person who could teach me how to sew. I thought I might get into yoga. I thought going for frozen yogurt was something you would just do. I thought there would be red cups at parties. And I thought I would be different. I thought it would be like coming home, circling back to my essential and inevitable self. I imagined myself more relaxed—less hung up on things. I thought I would find it easy to speak to strangers. I thought I would be funny, even, make people laugh with my warm, wry, and only slightly self-deprecating sense of humor. I thought I would develop the easy confidence of a head girl, the light patter of an artist. I imagined myself dancing in a smoky nightclub, spinning slackly while my arms floated like laundry loose on the breeze. I imagined others watching me, thinking, Wow, she is so free.

As for describing the smell of a spaniel mixed with the smell of torches, laurels, incense, banners, wax candles and a garland of rose leaves crushed by a satin heel that has been laid up in camphor, perhaps Shakespeare, had he paused in the middle of writing Antony and Cleopatra — But Shakespeare did not pause. Confessing our inadequacy, then, we can but note that to Flush Italy, in these the fullest, the freest, the happiest years of his life, meant mainly a succession of smells. Love, it must be supposed, was gradually losing its appeal. Smell remained. Now that they were established in Casa Guidi again, all had their avocations. Mr. Browning wrote regularly in one room; Mrs. Browning wrote regularly in another. The baby played in the nursery. But Flush wandered off into the streets of Florence to enjoy the rapture of smell. He threaded his path through main streets and back streets, through squares and alleys, by smell. He nosed his way from smell to smell; the rough, the smooth, the dark, the golden. He went in and out, up and down, where they beat brass, where they bake bread, where the women sit combing their hair, where the bird-cages are piled high on the causeway, where the wine spills itself in dark red stains on the pavement, where leather smells and harness and garlic, where cloth is beaten, where vine leaves tremble, where men sit and drink and spit and dice — he ran in and out, always with his nose to the ground, drinking in the essence; or with his nose in the air vibrating with the aroma. He slept in this hot patch of sun — how sun made the stone reek! he sought that tunnel of shade — how acid shade made the stone smell! He devoured whole bunches of ripe grapes largely because of their purple smell; he chewed and spat out whatever tough relic of goat or macaroni the Italian housewife had thrown from the balcony — goat and macaroni were raucous smells, crimson smells. He followed the swooning sweetness of incense into the violet intricacies of dark cathedrals; and, sniffing, tried to lap the gold on the window- stained tomb. Nor was his sense of touch much less acute. He knew Florence in its marmoreal smoothness and in its gritty and cobbled roughness. Hoary folds of drapery, smooth fingers and feet of stone received the lick of his tongue, the quiver of his shivering snout. Upon the infinitely sensitive pads of his feet he took the clear stamp of proud Latin inscriptions. In short, he knew Florence as no human being has ever known it; as Ruskin never knew it or George Eliot either.

After Dena hung up she didn’t feel any better. Sookie was wrong. Dena could barely remember any of the girls she went to school with, or at times even the names of the schools. Dena had always been a loner. She did not feel connected to anything. Or anybody. She felt as if everybody else had come into the world with a set of instructions about how to live and someone had forgotten to give them to her. She had no clue what she was supposed to feel, so she had spent her life faking at being a human being, with no idea how other people felt. What was it like to really love someone? To really fit in or belong somewhere? She was quick, and a good mimic, so she learned at an early age to give the impression of a normal, happy girl, but inside she had always been lonely. As a child she had spent hours looking in windows at families, from trains, buses, seeing the people inside that looked so happy and content, longing to get inside but not knowing how to do it. She always thought things might change if she could just find the right apartment, the right house, but she never could. No matter where she lived it never felt like home. In fact, she didn’t even know what “home” felt like. Did everybody feel alone out there in the world or were they all acting? Was she the only one? She had been flying blind all her life and now suddenly she had started to hit the wall. She sat drinking red wine, and thinking and wondering what was the matter with her. What had gone wrong?

Before Parting A MONTH or twain to live on honeycomb Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time, Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme, And that strong purple under juice and foam Where the wine’s heart has burst; Nor feel the latter kisses like the first. Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray Even to change the bitterness of it, The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet, To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise Over my face and eyes. And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat Makes of its foolish poppies’ mouths of red? These were not sown, these are not harvested, They grow a month and are cast under feet And none has care thereof, As none has care of a divided love. I know each shadow of your lips by rote, Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows; The fashion of fair temples tremulous With tender blood, and colour of your throat; I know not how love is gone out of this, Seeing that all was his. Love’s likeness there endures upon all these: But out of these one shall not gather love. Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough To make love whole and fill his lips with ease, As some bee-builded cell Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell. I know not how this last month leaves your hair Less full of purple colour and hid spice, And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care; And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet Worth patience to regret.

The impact of a dollar upon the heart" The impact of a dollar upon the heart Smiles warm red light Sweeping from the hearth rosily upon the white table, With the hanging cool velvet shadows Moving softly upon the door. The impact of a million dollars Is a crash of flunkeys And yawning emblems of Persia Cheeked against oak, France and a sabre, The outcry of old beauty Whored by pimping merchants To submission before wine and chatter. Silly rich peasants stamp the carpets of men, Dead men who dreamed fragrance and light Into their woof, their lives; The rug of an honest bear Under the feet of a cryptic slave Who speaks always of baubles, Forgetting state, multitude, work, and state, Champing and mouthing of hats, Making ratful squeak of hats, Hats.

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? pr.23.30 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. pr.23.31 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. pr.23.32 At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.† pr.23.33 Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. pr.23.34 Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.† pr.23.35 They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

He asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?" I answered "they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire: what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or gray: and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, especially if it be in things indifferent.

Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine, Marching below, and we still gulping wine?” From the sad magic of his fragrant cup The red-faced old centurion started up, Cursed, battered on the table. “No,” he said, “Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion’s dead, Dead in the first year of this damned campaign— The Legion’s dead, dead, and won’t rise again. Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die, But we need pity also, you and I, Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss, Who live to see the Legion come to this, Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot, Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot. O, brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh! Where are they now? God! watch it struggle by, The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine. Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!” “Strabo,” said Gracchus, “you are strange tonight. The Legion is the Legion; it’s all right. If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking, God damn it! you’ll not better them by drinking. They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands. The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands, And these same men before the autumn’s fall Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.

There are strawberries growing among my bulbs. Wild ones, seeded from God knows where, poking their pale little fingers among the tulips and crocuses. Wild strawberries are invasive; not quite as invasive as dandelions, but those little heart-shaped leaves conceal a powerful hunger for conquest, sending their runners everywhere, each one an outpost preparing itself for a future invasion. And yet I cannot bring myself, père, to curb their cheery exuberance. Though more or less worthless in terms of fruit, the little white flowers and pretty leaves make excellent ground count cover, keeping the thistles and ragwort at bay without suppressing my daffodils. And besides, in summer, there may be enough of the tiny red berries to put on a tart, or flavor a glassful of sweet white wine. That is, if the birds do not steal them first. They too enjoy their sweetness. Those strawberries will creep, Reynaud, said Narcisse's voice in my mind. Let them stay, and in a month, your beds will be nothing but strawberries.

In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco. There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too. Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu and I’d eat it; let me smell the drawn butter and lobster claws. There were places where they specialized in thick and red roast beef au jus, or roast chicken basted in wine. There were places where hamburgs sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel. And oh, that pan-fried chow mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman’s Wharf — nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market Street chili beans, redhot, and french-fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that’s my ah-dream of San Francisco…

As a little drop of water added to a quantity of wine is completely dispersed and takes on the color and taste of wine, as red-hot iron becomes like molten fire losing its original form, as air when it is inundated with the sun’s light is transformed into total splendor and clarity so that it no longer seems illuminated but, rather, seems to be light itself, so I felt myself die of tender liquefaction, and I had only the strength left to murmur the words of the psalm: “Behold my bosom is like new wine, sealed, which bursts new vessels,” and suddenly I saw a brilliant light and in it a saffron-colored form which flamed up in a sweet and shining fire, and that splendid light spread through all the shining fire, and this shining fire through that golden form and that brilliant light and that shining fire through the whole form.

More wine for me, pour me some more!" "You smart girl, I knew you're a smart girl, just teasing...” Faces turn red, the dark earth blood is rising. They wink at Pelka, wink at the host: "He knows his goods!" The women feel the buttons constricting them - they undo one, another, a third. By twos the guests go outside to get some air. "Well, my dear guests, are you soaked to the gills? Eh? And now-to dance! Get lively!" The table and the chairs vanish. The middle of the room is empty. Ivan the Monk jumps out of his hole, a tambourine in his hands: "Tim-ta-a-am! Tim-ta-a-am!" “Eh-hey!" the redhead suddenly snatches the tambourine and sweeps off, tapping wildly in a circle. Eyes closed: a white sleepless sun-a white night on the meadow-white columns of smoke swaying over fires... "Eh-ah!"-to whirl herself to death, to whirl out everything, to empty herself - nothing has ever been... Heavy boots are thumping on the floor, beards fly in the wind, the frock-coat tails go flying... hey, get going, faster, faster - a hundred versts an hour! ("The North")

[Quomodo stilla aquae modica, multo infusa vino, deficere a se tota videtur, dum et saporem vini induit, et colorem; et quomodo ferrum ignitum et candens, igni simillimum fit, pristina propriaque forma exutum; et quomodo solis luce perfusus aer in eamdem transformatur luminis claritatem, adeo ut non tam illuminatus, quam ipsum lumen esse videatur: sic omnem tunc in sanctis humanam affectionem quodam ineffabili modo necesse erit a semetipsa liquescere, atque in Dei penitus transfundi voluntatem.] As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God.

Then Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads began a dance, far wilder than the dance of the trees; not merely a dance of fun and beauty (though it was that too) but a magic dance of plenty, and where their hands touched, and where their feet fell, the feast came into existence- sides of roasted meat that filled the grove with delicious smells, and wheaten cakes and oaten cakes, honey and many-colored sugars and cream as thick as porridge and as smooth as still water, peaches, nectarines, pomegranates, pears, grapes, straw-berries, raspberries- pyramids and cataracts of fruit. Then, in great wooden cups and bowls and mazers, wreathed with ivy, came the wines; dark, thick ones like syrups of mulberry juice, and clear red ones like red jellies liquefied, and yellow wines and green wines and yellow-green and greenish-yellow. But for the tree people different fare was provided. When Lucy saw Clodsley Shovel and his moles scuffling up the turf in various places (when Bacchus had pointed out to them) and realized that the trees were going to eat earth it gave her rather a shudder. But when she saw the earths that were actually brought to them she felt quite different. They began with a rich brown loam that looked almost exactly like chocolate; so like chocolate, in fact, that Edmund tried a piece of it, but he did not find it all nice. When the rich loam had taken the edge off their hunger, the trees turned to an earth of the kind you see in Somerset, which is almost pink. They said it was lighter and sweeter. At the cheese stage they had a chalky soil, and then went on to delicate confections of the finest gravels powdered with choice silver sand. They drank very little wine, and it made the Hollies very talkative: for the most part they quenched their thirst with deep draughts of mingled dew and rain, flavored with forest flowers and the airy taste of the thinnest clouds.

Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool. His mind broke the surface and fell back several times. There was red lipstick on his beard. He opened one eye, saw the brilliant colors of the quilt and closed his eye quickly. But after a while he looked again. His eye went past the quilt to the floor, to the broken plate in the corner, to the glasses standing on the table turned over on the floor, to the spilled wine and the books like heavy fallen butterflies. There were little bits of curled red paper all over the place and the sharp smell of firecrackers. He could see through the kitchen door to the steak plates stacked high and the skillets deep in grease. Hundreds of cigarette butts were stamped out on the floor. And under the firecracker smell was a fine combination of wine and whiskey perfume. His eye stopped for a moment on a little pile of hairpins in the middle of the floor. He rolled over slowly and supporting himself on one elbow he looked out the broken window. Cannery Row was quiet and sunny. The boiler was open. The door of the Palace Flophouse was closed. A man slept peacefully among the weeds in the vacant lot. The Bear Flag was shut up tight.

Love is how the other person likes their coffee on a morning. How long they put their toast in the toaster for. How they like their throw pillows on the sofa to be arranged. How hot they have their shower water. How many bubbles in the bath. How they always leave empty glasses on the bar in the kitchen, and how they know exactly how you take your coffee. How they know how many candles to light around a bathtub before you get in, and how chilled your wine has to be before it’s an acceptable drinking temperature. We still have so much to learn about each other, and while I know there’s no rush, I want to know these things. I want to know if he prefers butter or jelly on his toast on a morning and if really he prefers tea over coffee, which I suspect he does. I want to know if he changes the temperature of the shower water to my preference of red hot instead of a normal hot. I want to know every little thing I don’t. Because at the end of the day, when it gets hard and you’re in the middle of the room shouting at each other over something trivial, you won’t remember the huge declarations of love. When you’re sitting against your bedroom door crying because you hate fighting, you’ll remember the way he smiles at you over breakfast and the way he trails his thumb down your spine to make you shiver. You’ll remember all the crazy little things that remind you that, no matter what, no matter how difficult or impossible it may seem, there’s no one else in this world more perfect for you than he is.

The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll Nine months he sailed the wine-red seas of his mother's blood Out of the cave of dreaded Night, of sleep, Of troubling dreams he sailed In his frail dark boat, the boat of himself, Through the dangerous ocean of his vast mother he sailed From the distant cave where the threads of men's lives are spun, Then measured, and then cut short By the Three Fatal Sisters, intent on their gruesome handcrafts, And the lives of women also are twisted into the strand. And we, the twelve who were later to die by his hand At his father's relentless command, Sailed as well, in the dark frail boats of ourselves Through the turbulent seas of our swollen and sore-footed mothers Who were not royal queens, but a motley and piebald collection, Bought, traded, captured, kidnapped from serfs and strangers. After the nine-month voyage we came to shore, Beached at the same time as he was, struck by the hostile air, Infants when he was an infant, wailing just as he wailed, Helpless as he was helpless, but ten times more helpless as well, For his birth was longed-for and feasted, as our births were not. His mother presented a princeling. Our various mothers Spawned merely, lambed, farrowed, littered, Foaled, whelped and kittened, brooded, hatched out their clutch. We were animal young, to be disposed of at will, Sold, drowned in the well, traded, used, discarded when bloomless. He was fathered; we simply appeared, Like the crocus, the rose, the sparrows endangered in mud. Our lives were twisted in his life; we also were children When he was a child, We were his pets and his toythings, mock sisters, his tiny companions. We grew as he grew, laughed also, ran as he ran, Though sandier, hungrier, sun-speckled, most days meatless. He saw us as rightfully his, for whatever purpose He chose, to tend him and feed him, to wash him, amuse him, Rock him to sleep in the dangerous boats of ourselves. We did not know as we played with him there in the sand On the beach of our rocky goat-island, close by the harbour, That he was foredoomed to swell to our cold-eyed teenaged killer. If we had known that, would we have drowned him back then? Young children are ruthless and selfish: everyone wants to live. Twelve against one, he wouldn't have stood a chance. Would we? In only a minute, when nobody else was looking? Pushed his still-innocent child's head under the water With our own still-innocent childish nursemaid hands, And blamed it on waves. Would we have had it in us? Ask the Three Sisters, spinning their blood-red mazes, Tangling the lives of men and women together. Only they know how events might then have had altered. Only they know our hearts. From us you will get no answer.

The universe is but a tenement of all things visible. Darkness and day the passing guests of Time. Life slips away, a dream of little joy and mean content. Ah! wise the old philosophers who sought To lengthen their long sunsets among flowers, By stealing the young night's unsullied hours And the dim moments with sweet burdens fraught. And now Spring beckons me with verdant hand, And Nature's wealth of eloquence doth win Forth to the fragrant-bowered nectarine, Where my dear friends abide, a careless band. There meet my gentle, matchless brothers, there I come, the obscure poet, all unfit To wear the radiant jewelry of wit, And in their golden presence cloud the air. And while the thrill of meeting lingers, soon As the first courtly words, the feast is spread, While, couched on flowers 'mid wine-cups flashing red, We drink deep draughts unto The Lady Moon. Then as without the touch of verse divine There is no outlet for the pent-up soul, 'Twas ruled that he who quaffed no fancy's bowl Should drain the "Golden Valley" cups of wine

She scanned the shadows again, bracing herself for more assailants. Nearby, a young woman watched her, and she flashed Celaena a conspirator’s grin. Celaena tried not to look too interested, though the girl was one of the most stunning people she’d ever beheld. It wasn’t just her wine-red hair or the color of her eyes, a red-brown Celaena had never seen before. No, it was the girl’s armor that initially caught her interest: ornate to the point of probably being useless, but still a work of art. The right shoulder was fashioned into a snarling wolf’s head, and her helmet, tucked into the crook of her arm, featured a wolf hunched over the noseguard. Another wolf’s head had been molded into the pommel of her broadsword. On anyone else, the armor might have looked flamboyant and ridiculous, but on the girl … There was a strange, boyish sort of carelessness to her.

Oh, she had been some kind of fine-looking, all right, with that dynamite body and that gorgeous fall of red wavy hair. But she was weak . . . weak somehow. It was as if she was sending out radio signals which only he could receive. You could point to certain things—how much she smoked (but he had almost cured her of that), the restless way her eyes moved, never quite meeting the eyes of whoever was talking to her, only touching them from time to time and then leaping nimbly away; her habit of lightly rubbing her elbows when she was nervous; the look of her fingernails, which were kept neat but brutally short. Tom noticed this latter the first time he met her. She picked up her glass of white wine, he saw her nails, and thought: She keeps them short like that because she bites them. Lions may not think, at least not the way people think . . . but they see. And when antelopes start away from a waterhole, alerted by that dusty-rug scent of approaching death, the cats can observe which one falls to the rear of the pack, maybe because it has a lame leg, maybe because it is just naturally slower . . . or maybe because its sense of danger is less developed. And it might even be possible that

To fill the days up of his dateless year Flame from Queen Helen to Queen Guenevere? For first of all the sphery signs whereby Love severs light from darkness, and most high, In the white front of January there glows The rose-red sign of Helen like a rose: And gold-eyed as the shore-flower shelterless Whereon the sharp-breathed sea blows bitterness, A storm-star that the seafarers of love Strain their wind-wearied eyes for glimpses of, Shoots keen through February's grey frost and damp The lamplike star of Hero for a lamp; The star that Marlowe sang into our skies With mouth of gold, and morning in his eyes; And in clear March across the rough blue sea The signal sapphire of Alcyone Makes bright the blown bross of the wind-foot year; And shining like a sunbeam-smitten tear Full ere it fall, the fair next sign in sight Burns opal-wise with April-coloured light When air is quick with song and rain and flame, My birth-month star that in love's heaven hath name Iseult, a light of blossom and beam and shower, My singing sign that makes the song-tree flower; Next like a pale and burning pearl beyond The rose-white sphere of flower-named Rosamond Signs the sweet head of Maytime; and for June Flares like an angered and storm-reddening moon Her signal sphere, whose Carthaginian pyre Shadowed her traitor's flying sail with fire; Next, glittering as the wine-bright jacinth-stone, A star south-risen that first to music shone, The keen girl-star of golden Juliet bears Light northward to the month whose forehead wears Her name for flower upon it, and his trees Mix their deep English song with Veronese; And like an awful sovereign chrysolite Burning, the supreme fire that blinds the night, The hot gold head of Venus kissed by Mars, A sun-flower among small sphered flowers of stars, The light of Cleopatra fills and burns The hollow of heaven whence ardent August yearns; And fixed and shining as the sister-shed Sweet tears for Phaethon disorbed and dead, The pale bright autumn's amber-coloured sphere, That through September sees the saddening year As love sees change through sorrow, hath to name Francesca's; and the star that watches flame The embers of the harvest overgone Is Thisbe's, slain of love in Babylon, Set in the golden girdle of sweet signs A blood-bright ruby; last save one light shines An eastern wonder of sphery chrysopras, The star that made men mad, Angelica's; And latest named and lordliest, with a sound Of swords and harps in heaven that ring it round, Last love-light and last love-song of the year's, Gleams like a glorious emerald Guenevere's.

What would you like for your own life, Kate, if you could choose?” “Anything?” “Of course anything.” “That’s really easy, Aunty Ivy.” “Go on then.” “A straw hat...with a bright scarlet ribbon tied around the top and a bow at the back. A tea-dress like girls used to wear, with big red poppies all over the fabric. A pair of flat, white pumps, comfortable but really pretty. A bicycle with a basket on the front. In the basket is a loaf of fresh bread, cheese, fruit oh...and a bottle of sparkly wine, you know, like posh people drink. “I’m cycling down a lane. There are no lorries or cars or bicycles. No people – just me. The sun is shining through the trees, making patterns on the ground. At the end of the lane is a gate, sort of hidden between the bushes and trees. I stop at the gate, get off the bike and wheel it into the garden. “In the garden there are flowers of all kinds, especially roses. They’re my favourite. I walk down the little path to a cottage. It’s not big, just big enough. The front door needs painting and has a little stained glass window at the top. I take the food out of the basket and go through the door. “Inside, everything is clean, pretty and bright. There are vases of flowers on every surface and it smells sweet, like lemon cake. At the end of the room are French windows. They need painting too, but it doesn’t matter. I go through the French windows into a beautiful garden. Even more flowers there...and a veranda. On the veranda is an old rocking chair with patchwork cushions and next to it a little table that has an oriental tablecloth with gold tassels. I put the food on the table and pour the wine into a glass. I’d sit in the rocking chair and close my eyes and think to myself... this is my place.” From A DISH OF STONES

The Garden of Proserpine" Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams. I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep. Here life has death for neighbour, And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour, Weak ships and spirits steer; They drive adrift, and whither They wot not who make thither; But no such winds blow hither, And no such things grow here. No growth of moor or coppice, No heather-flower or vine, But bloomless buds of poppies, Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine. Pale, without name or number, In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber All night till light is born; And like a soul belated, In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated Comes out of darkness morn. Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well. Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands. She waits for each and other, She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother, The life of fruits and corn; And spring and seed and swallow Take wing for her and follow Where summer song rings hollow And flowers are put to scorn. There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs. We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

XII. If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. XIII. As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupified, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! XIV. Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain. And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. XV. I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart, As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier's art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights. XVI. Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm to mine to fix me to the place, The way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace! Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. XVII. Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first, What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! XVIII. Better this present than a past like that: Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howlet or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. XIX. A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. XX. So petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. XXI. Which, while I forded - good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! - It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek. XXII. Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage - XXIII. The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque, What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No footprint leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

Ode to the Beloved’s Hips" Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered percussion in the morning—are the morning. Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me— I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna. How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur. My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena, ecstatic devourer. O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped the amber—fast honey—from their openness— Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet- dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond— to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue— come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips, I am—strummed-song and succubus. They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book— the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel. Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays, Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray. Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera. Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle: What do I see? Hips: Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone. Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread, wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be: Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel. Bone basin bone throne bone lamp. Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery— slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit, laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God, I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth for pear upon apple upon fig. More than all that are your hips. They are a city. They are Kingdom— Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire— thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth. Beloved, your hips are the war. At night your legs, love, are boulevards leading me beggared and hungry to your candy house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late and the tables have been cleared, in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake. O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve, a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon, let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming for your dark matter. Along las calles de tus muslos I wander— follow the parade of pulse like a drum line— descend into your Plaza del Toros— hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros. Your arched hips—ay, mi torera. Down the long corridor, your wet walls lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed. I am the animal born to rush your rich red muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan, a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre Manolete—press and part you like a wound— make the crowd pounding in the grandstand of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer.

And even in the open air the stench of whiskey was appalling. To this fiendish poison, I am certain, the greater part of the squalor I saw is due. Many of these vermin were obviously not foreigners—I counted at least five American countenances in which a certain vanished decency half showed through the red whiskey bloating. Then I reflected upon the power of wine, and marveled how self-respecting persons can imbibe such stuff, or permit it to be served upon their tables. It is the deadliest enemy with which humanity is faced. Not all the European wars could produce a tenth of the havock occasioned among men by the wretched fluid which responsible governments allow to be sold openly. Looking upon that mob of sodden brutes, my mind’s eye pictured a scene of different kind; a table bedecked with spotless linen and glistening silver, surrounded by gentlemen immaculate in evening attire—and in the reddening faces of those gentlemen I could trace the same lines which appeared in full development of the beasts of the crowd. Truly, the effects of liquor are universal, and the shamelessness of man unbounded. How can reform be wrought in the crowd, when supposedly respectable boards groan beneath the goblets of rare old vintages? Is mankind asleep, that its enemy is thus entertained as a bosom friend? But a week or two ago, at a parade held in honour of the returning Rhode Island National Guard, the Chief Executive of this State, Mr. Robert Livingston Beeckman, prominent in New York, Newport, and Providence society, appeared in such an intoxicated condition that he could scarce guide his mount, or retain his seat in the saddle, and he the guardian of the liberties and interests of that Colony carved by the faith, hope, and labour of Roger Williams from the wilderness of savage New-England! I am perhaps an extremist on the subject of prohibition, but I can see no justification whatsoever for the tolerance of such a degrading demon as drink.

At one-thirty in the deep dark morning, the cooking odors blew up through the windy corridors of the house. Down the stairs, one by one, came women in curlers, men in bathrobes, to tiptoe and peer into the kitchen- lit only by fitful gusts of red fire from the hissing stove. And there in the black kitchen at two of a warm summer morning, Grandma floated like an apparition, amidst bangings and clatterings, half blind once more, her fingers groping instinctively in the dimness, shaking out spice clouds over bubbling pots and simmering kettles, her face in the firelight red, magical, and enchanted as she seized and stirred and poured the sublime foods. Quiet, quiet, the boarders laid the best linens and gleaming silver and lit candles rather than switch on electric lights and snap the spell. Grandfather, arriving home from a late evening's work at the printing office, was startled to hear grace being said in the candlelit dining room. As for the food? The meats were deviled, the sauces curried, the greens mounded with sweet butter, the biscuits splashed with jeweled honey; everything toothsome, luscious, and so miraculously refreshing that a gentle lowing broke out as from a pasturage of beasts gone wild in clover. One and all cried out their gratitude for their loose-fitting night clothes.

In the center of the room Sarra the demon hung upside down by one leg, its arms bound behind its back, its suit scuffed-looking. Beneath it, crawling around an intricately scribed circle, a woman with short, curly red hair drew binding symbols with a gold stick. She looked up as I fanned away the smoke that was billowing up from the crack in the tile. "You're a Summoner. Hullo. I'm Noelle. Did you know that you have mismatched eyes?" I walked around the demon. It glared at me. "Yes, I know. Why do you have Sarra strung up by one leg?" She drew another symbol. It flared bright green as soon as the stick lifted from the circle. "It was getting a bit stroppy with me. The Hanged Man always teaches them a few manners. It's retaliating with the smoke. Are those spirits I saw yours, then?" "Yes, they are. There are four others as well. I hate to be a bother, but I'm in a bit of a hurry, what with Christian being held by this one's master and all, so if you could possibly just give me the abbreviated version of what's going on here, I'll be on my way to rescue him." She leaned back on her heels and sucked the tip of her gold stick. "Asmodeus, eh?" The demon snarled. A chunk of ceiling fell behind me. We both ignored it. It just never does to give a demon the satisfaction of knowing it's startled you. "It's a nasty bag of tricks, but I heard through the demonic grapevine that it was weakened and searching for a suitable sacrifice to regain its power," she added. "Well, it can't have Christian; he's mine. Back to the demon, if you don't mind…" She looked up at Sarra, still sucking the stick. "It's a pretty specimen, isn't it? I like the hair gel. Nice touch. The mustache is a bit much, though, don't you think? Makes it look so smarmy." "Um…" "I'm destroying it, so I suppose it really doesn't matter." I blinked and avoided two wine bottles as they flew out of a rack when the demon hissed at the Guardian.

The people cast themselves down by the fuming boards while servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water, and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring. The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables, their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moon as though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight. The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of fox gaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed to come before her guests after so much murder. Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained, turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lord till he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals. The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raised it high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed: Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold, pursued around the cup with double-pointed spear dark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons; she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face, and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human. Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet high and greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood: “In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife, the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage; I was in danger often, both through joy and grief, of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face. I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help, but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed. I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes, and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me; then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust, piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues, the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man, and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst, and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage. As I swam on, alone between sea and sky, with but my crooked heart for dog and company, I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear. Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of gods and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness. Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts, I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.” All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege, and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit; They did not fully understand the impious words but saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head. The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed, and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs; all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled. Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply: "This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath! These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!" He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hunger far from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.

In the third part of the year When men begin to gather fuel Against the coming cold Here hooves run hard on frosty ground Begins our song: For centuries we lived alone high on the moors Herding the deer for milk and cheese For leather and horn Humans came seldom nigh For we with our spells held them at bay And they with gifts of wine and grain Did honour us. Returning at evening from the great mountains Our red hoods rang with bells. Lightly we ran Until before our own green hill There we did stand. She is stolen! She is snatched away! Through watery meads Straying our lovely daughter. She of the wild eyes! She of the wild hair! Snatched up to the saddle of the lord of Weir Who has his castle high upon a crag A league away. Upon the horse of air at once we rode To where Weir's castle looks like a crippled claw Into the moon. And taking form of minstrels brightly clad We paced upon white ponies to the gate And rang thereon "We come to sing unto my lord of Weir A merry song." Into his sorry hall we stepped Where was our daughter bound? Near his chair. "Come play a measure!" "Sir, at once we will." And we began to sing and play To lightly dance in rings and faster turn No man within that hall could keep his seat But needs must dance and leap Against his will This was the way we danced them to the door And sent them on their way into the world Where they will leap amain Till they think one kind thought For all I know they may be dancing still. While we returned with our own Into our hall And entering in Made fast the grassy door. from "The Dancing of the Lord of Weir

About sexuality of English mice. A warm perfume is growing little by little in the room. An orchard scent, a caramelized sugar scent. Mrs. MOUSE roasts apples in the chimney. The apple fruits smell grass of England and the pastry oven. On a thread drawn in the flames, the apples, from the buried autumn, turn a golden color and grind in tempting bubbles. But I have the feeling that you already worry. Mrs. MOUSE in a Laura Ashley apron, pink and white stripes, with a big purple satin bow on her belt, Mrs. MOUSE is certainly not a free mouse? Certainly she cooks all day long lemon meringue tarts, puddings and cheese pies, in the kitchen of the burrow. She suffocates a bit in the sweet steams, looks with a sigh the patched socks trickling, hanging from the ceiling, between mint leaves and pomegranates. Surely Mrs. MOUSE just knows the inside, and all the evening flavours are just good for Mrs. MOUSE flabbiness. You are totally wrong - we can forgive you – we don’t know enough that the life in the burrow is totally communal. To pick the blackberries, the purplish red elderberries, the beechnuts and the sloes Mr. and Mrs. MOUSE escape in turn, and glean in the bushes the winter gatherings. After, with frozen paws, intoxicated with cold wind, they come back in the burrow, and it’s a good time when the little door, rond little oak wood door brings a yellow ray in the blue of the evening. Mr. and Mrs. MOUSE are from outside and from inside, in the most complete commonality of wealth and climate. While Mrs. MOUSE prepares the hot wine, Mr. MOUSE takes care of the children. On the top of the bunk bed Thimoty is reading a cartoon, Mr. MOUSE helps Benjamin to put a fleece-lined pyjama, one in a very sweet milky blue for snow dreams. That’s it … children are in bed …. Mrs. MOUSE blazes the hot wine near the chimney, it smells lemon, cinnamon, big dry flames, a blue tempest. Mr. and Mrs. MOUSE can wait and watch. They drink slowly, and then .... they will make love ….You didn’t know? It’s true, we need to guess it. Don’t expect me to tell you in details the mice love in patchwork duvets, the deep cherry wood bed. It’s just good enough not to speak about it. Because, to be able to speak about it, it would need all the perfumes, all the silent, all the talent and all the colors of the day. We already make love preparing the blackberries wine, the lemon meringue pie, we already make love going outside in the coldness to earn the wish of warmness and come back. We make love downstream of the day, as we take care of our patiences. It’s a love very warm, very present and yet invisible, mice’s love in the duvets. Imagine, dream a bit ….. Don’t speak too badly about English mice’s sexuality …..

You’re the only person who doesn’t see the advantage in such a match.” “That’s because I don’t believe in marriages of convenience. Given your family’s history, I’d think that you wouldn’t either.” She colored. “And why do assume it would be such a thing? Is it so hard to believe that a man might genuinely care for me? That he might actually want to marry me for myself?” “Why would anyone wish to marry the reckless Lady Celia, after all,” she went on in a choked voice, “if not for her fortune or to shore up his reputation?” “I didn’t mean any such thing,” he said sharply. But she’d worked herself up into a fine temper. “Of course you did. You kissed me last night only to make a point, and you couldn’t even bear to kiss me properly again today-“ “Now see here,” he said, grabbing her shoulders. “I didn’t kiss you ‘properly’ today because I was afraid if I did I might not stop.” That seemed to draw her up short. “Wh-What?” Sweet God, he shouldn’t have said that, but he couldn’t let her go on thinking she was some sort of pariah around men. “I knew that if I got his close, and I put my mouth on yours…” But now he was this close. And she was staring up at him with that mix of bewilderment and hurt pride, and he couldn’t help himself. Not anymore. He kissed her, to show her what she seemed blind to. That he wanted her. That even knowing it was wrong and could never work, he wanted to have her. She tore her lips from his. “Mr. Pinter-“ she began in a whisper. “Jackson,” he growled. “Let me hear you say my name.” Backing away from him, she cast him a wounded expression. “Y-you don’t have to pretend-“ “I’m not pretending anything, damn it!” Grabbing her by the sleeves, he dragged her close and kissed her again, with even more heat. How could she not see that he ached to take her? How could she not know what a temptation she was? Her lips intoxicated him, made him light-headed. Made him reckless enough to kiss her so impudently that any other woman of her rank would be insulted. When she pulled away a second time, he expected her to slap him. But all she did was utter a feeble protest. “Please, Mr. Pinter-“ “Jackson,” he ordered in a low, unsteady voice, emboldened by the melting look in her eyes. “Say my Christian name.” Her lush dark lashes lowered as a blush stained her cheeks. “Jackson…” His breath caught in his throat at the intimacy of it, and fire exploded in his brain. She wasn’t pushing him away, so to hell with trying to be a gentleman. He took her mouth savagely this time, plundering every part of its silky warmth as his blood pulsed high in his veins. She tasted of red wine and lemon cake, both tart and sweet at once. He wanted to eat her up. He wanted to take her, right here in this room. So when she pulled out of his arms to back away, he walked after her. She didn’t stop backing away, but neither did she turn tail and run. “Last night you claimed this wouldn’t happen again.” “I know. And yet it has.” Like someone in an opium den, he’d been craving her for months. And how that he’d suddenly had a taste of the very thing he craved, he had to have more. When she came up against the writing table, he caught her about the waist. She turned her head away before he could kiss her, so he settled for burying his face in her neck to nuzzle the tender throat he’d been coveting. With a shiver, she slid her hands up his chest. “Why are you doing this?” “Because I want you,” he admitted, damning himself. “Because I’ve always wanted you.” Then he covered her mouth with his once more.

O my dark Rosaleen,     Do not sigh, do not weep! The priests are on the ocean green,     They march along the deep. There’s wine from the royal Pope,     Upon the ocean green;    And Spanish ale shall give you hope,        My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, Shall give you health, and help, and hope,     My Dark Rosaleen! Over hills, and thro’ dales,     Have I roam’d for your sake; All yesterday I sail’d with sails     On river and on lake. The Erne, at its highest flood,     I dash’d across unseen, For there was lightning in my blood,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! O, there was lightning in my blood, Red lighten’d thro’ my blood.     My Dark Rosaleen! All day long, in unrest,     To and fro, do I move. The very soul within my breast     Is wasted for you, love! The heart in my bosom faints     To think of you, my Queen, My life of life, my saint of saints,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! To hear your sweet and sad complaints, My life, my love, my saint of saints,     My Dark Rosaleen! Woe and pain, pain and woe,     Are my lot, night and noon, To see your bright face clouded so,     Like to the mournful moon. But yet will I rear your throne     Again in golden sheen; ‘Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! ‘Tis you shall have the golden throne, ‘Tis you shall reign, and reign alone,     My Dark Rosaleen! Over dews, over sands,     Will I fly, for your weal: Your holy delicate white hands     Shall girdle me with steel. At home, in your emerald bowers,     From morning’s dawn till e’en, You’ll pray for me, my flower of flowers,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My fond Rosaleen! You’ll think of me through daylight hours My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,     My Dark Rosaleen! I could scale the blue air,     I could plough the high hills, Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,     To heal your many ills! And one beamy smile from you     Would float like light between My toils and me, my own, my true,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My fond Rosaleen! Would give me life and soul anew,     My Dark Rosaleen! O, the Erne shall run red,     With redundance of blood, The earth shall rock beneath our tread,        And flames wrap hill and wood, And gun-peal and slogan-cry     Wake many a glen serene, Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! The Judgement Hour must first be nigh, Ere you can fade, ere you can die,     My Dark Rosaleen!