"BACCHUS IN TUSCANY
He who tamed the Orient's distant shore,
The glorious God of Wine, had made his stay
Around the Etruscan hills, where evermore
His joyful presence held perpetual sway.
And there, where like a palace, proud and tall,
An august brow ascends toward the skies,
Upon a verdant meadow, it befell
That with fair Ariadne, he reclined,
And drinking, singing, to his idol kind,
He spoke in strains like these, that sweetly rise:
If the grapes' sweet blood
Does not refresh the veins,
This life is all too frail,
Too brief, and ever in pains.
So fair a blood is a ray alight
From that Sun you see in the sky;
And it remained bound and caught
In the net of many a cluster nigh.
Up, then, in this blood
Let us renew our arteries and muscles;
And for those who age and languish
Let us prepare glasses of grand scale:
And in a bold and festive throng,
Amidst jests and laughter,
Let us allow, let us allow to pass
Him, who in numbers and measures
Entangles and consumes himself,
And down here is called Time;
And drinking, and re-drinking,
Let us banish thoughts from our mind.
Blessed be
That Claret,
That is tapped in Avignon,
This vast and handsome flagon
I pour into my breast;
But of that, so pure,
That is harvested in Artimino,
I want to drink more than one vat;
And in so sweet, and noble a bath,
While my lung drinks it all in,
Ariadne, my Goddess, to you I consecrate
The vat, the flask, the bottle, the pepper pot.
Accursed,
Tormented,
Condemned
Be he, who on the plain of Lecore
First dared to plant the vines;
May countless
Goats and sheep
Devour those shoots,
And the slivers
A wicked rain of harshest hail:
But praised,
Celebrated,
Crowned
Be the hero who in the vineyards
Of Petraja and Castello
First planted the Moscadello.
Now that we are in festivity and joy,
Drink of this fair chrysolite,
Which is the son,
Of a cutting
That makes one live longer than usual:
If of this you drink,
Ariadne, my fairest,
So much will your beauty grow,
That in the flower of youth
You will seem Venus herself.
Of the dainty,
Of the so divine
Moscadelletto
Of Montalcino
Sometimes in jest
I ask for a cup;
But I do not venture
To drink a third;
It is a wine that is all grace,
But it satiates me too much.
Such a wine
I destine
For the indulgence and pleasure
Of the severe virgins,
Who enclosed in a sacred place
Have Vesta's fire in their care;
Such a wine
I destine
For the ladies of Paris,
And for those,
Who so fair
Make the Thames rejoice:
The Pisciancio of Cotone,
With which Scarlatti is rich,
I want it to be drunk by people,
Who do not know how to manage their affairs.
That so excessively sweet,
So cloying,
Pale, enervated
Piss of Bracciano,
Is not healthy,
And I want the erudite Pignatelli
To approve my saying
In his learned notebooks;
And if in Rome the common folk like it
I leave it to them in holy peace:
And if even Ciccio d'Andrea
With amiable fierceness,
With terrible sweetness,
Amidst great thunder of eloquence,
In my own presence
One day wanted to exalt
That sour, astringent wine of Aversa,
Which I do not know if it is unripe grape juice, or wine,
Let him drink it in Naples
In the company of the superb Fasano,
Who with profane tongue dared to say
That he understands good wine as well as I do;
And now an impious blasphemer pretends
To ride in triumph around the beautiful Sebeto
On the golden chariot of the Nisean Tigresses;
And even to entwine the vine laden with leaves
Around those laurels with which he adorns his hair,
Which happily thrives in Posillipo and Ischia;
And he goes further, and even dares
To brandish the Thyrsus and threaten me haughtily:
But I do not seek to brawl with him now;
Because Phoebus and Minerva preserve him
From my fury.
Perhaps it will happen that on the Sebeto I will want
To raise one day a throne of delights:
Then I will see him humbled, and as a gift
Devoutly offer me
The noble Greco of Posillipo and Ischia;
And perhaps then I will not disdain to reconcile with him, and we will drink in revelry
In the German fashion;
And amidst the vast amphorae and the decanting
The gentle Marquis of Oliveto
Will be an illustrious judge and a very happy spectator
Of our disputes.
But meanwhile here on the Arno
I drink the Buriano of Pescia,
The Trebbiano, the Colombano
With a full hand:
It is the true potable gold,
That is wont to send into exile
Every irremediable ill;
It is Helen's Nepenthe,
That makes the world cheerful
From thoughts
Dark and black
Always free, and always exempt.
Hence it happens, that always
Amidst his philosophy
The good old Rucellai
Kept it in company;
And by its light he well understood
All the atoms and every corpuscle
And he knew very well how to distinguish
The evening twilight from the morning one,
And he pointed out whence originated
The laziness of the stars and the vertigo.
How much, oh how much does he err
In seeking the truth
Who stays far from wine!
I stay close to it, and now enjoying I realize,
That in the fair color of ripe strawberry
The Barbarossa allures me,
And it delights me so much,
That I would like to temper the inner ardor,
If the Greek Hippocrates,
If the old Andromachus
Did not forbid it to me,
Nor scold me,
That it sometimes tends to weaken the stomach;
Let it upset it as much as it knows;
I want to drink at least two bowls of it,
Because I know, while I empty them,
In the end what becomes of it.
With a sip
Of good Corsican,
Or of pure old Spanish,
I offer a relief to that ill,
That is not from a charlatan:
Let it not be that chocolate
Is used, or tea,
Medicines made like that
Will never be for me:
I would rather drink poison
Than a glass, that was full
Of the bitter and wicked coffee:
Over there among the Arabs,
And among the Janissaries
Such a hostile liquor,
So black and turbid
Let the slaves gulp down.
Down in Tartarus,
Down in Erebus
The impious Belides invented it,
And Tisiphone and the other Furies
Administered it to Proserpina;
And if in Asia the Muslim
Gulps it down headlong,
He shows to have little judgment.
They have judgment, and are not fools,
Those Tuscan drinkers,
Who quaff the humors
Of the fair and the blonde,
That floods hearts with joy,
The Malvasia of Montegonzi;
When through the throat and the esophagus
She gurgles and murmurs,
She makes me be born in my chest
An indistinct, unknown delight,
That can well be felt,
But cannot be told.
I do not deny it, it is precious,
Fragrant
The liquid amber of Crete;
But too high and proud
It never quenched my thirst;
And it is conquered in grace
By the Etruscan Malvasia:
But if it should ever be that from the Cydonian cliff
The superb and noble shoots are taken
To regraft on the Tuscan hills,
They will be seen to lay down their natural pride,
And here where drinking is appreciated
They will have value of gentleness.
He who joins the squalid Ale
To his lips
Soon dies, or rarely reaches
Old age and senility:
Let him drink the cider of England
Who wants to go quickly underground;
Who wants to go quickly to death
Let him use the drinks of the North.
Those Norwegians and those Lapps
Make crazy drinks;
Those Lapps are also boors,
They are also filthy in their drinking;
Only in seeing them,
They would make me fly off the hinges.
But let such profane sayings
Rest with the evil god,
And let my profaned lip
Be purified, let it be immersed,
Let it be submerged
Inside a gilded tankard,
Full all around of that wine
Of the vine
So benign,
That flames in Sansavino;
Or of that which reddish,
Sparkling
Makes the Aretine superb,
Who raises it in Tregozzano,
And among the stones of Giggiano.
It will perhaps be more sparkling,
More pungent and more spicy,
O cupbearer, if you ask for
That Albano,
That Vaiano,
That turns blonde,
That turns red
There in the gardens of my Redi.
May manna from heaven rain on your tresses,
Gentle vine, that infuses this ambrosia;
May every vine of yours at all times move
New flowers, new fruits and new fronds;
May a river of milk in sweet and new fashion
Gently flood your stones;
Nor lazy frost, nor stormy rain
Ever disturb you, nor ever strip you of leaves,
And may your Lord in his oldest age
Be able to drink your wine by the bucket.
If Titonus' mistress
With a vast bowl
Of such wine made an invitation
To her gray-haired husband,
That good old man up there
Would return to youth.
Let us return meanwhile to drink;
But with what new refreshment
Will I be able to crown the glass
For a singing toast?
With the Topaz pressed in Lamporecchio,
Which is a famous castle for that Masetto,
I am now preparing to garland the cups,
Provided that it is frozen and pure,
Frozen, as in the season of frost
The coldest north wind whistles through the sky.
Cellars and coolers
Be ready at all hours
With polished little bottles
Closed and tight between the hoarfrosts
Of the crystalline snows.
The snows are the fifth element,
That compose the true drink:
He is truly mad who hopes to receive
A contentment in drinking without snows:
Let snow come from Vallombrosa
In abundance:
Let snow come from every hovel
In tufts;
And you, Satyrs, leave
So many fables and so many fibs,
And bring me ice
From the grotto of the mountain of Boboli.
With high picks
Of the woodpeckers
Break it up,
Crumble it,
Splinter it,
Crush it,
Until all of it can be resolved
Into minute, very cold powder,
That makes my drink fresher
For refreshment of the palate,
Now that I am dying of thirst.
If I put warm wine in my sack,
Say that I am not Bacchus;
If I ever taste a drop of it,
Say, and I forgive you,
That I am a true Arlotto:
And he who first in graceful verses
Had the flattering Graces at his side,
And then for his great heart, bold and frank
Vibrated his sayings in lightning converted,
The great Anacreontic admirable
Menzin, who shines for Phoebean garland,
May he offer me a hostile, bitter and inevitable
Drink of satiric bile.
But if I live most constantly
In wanting it very cold,
He who is sovereign in Pindus, and enjoys in Pindus
Immortal glories, and like Phoebus has boasts
May that gentle Filicaia always sing
Hymns of praise on his zither;
And other drunkenly festive swans,
Who crown themselves with laurel,
In their harmonious songs,
May my name always resound,
And re-echo:
Long live Bacchus our king!
Evoe,
Evoe!
Evoe may that so illustrious crowd
Reply in competition,
Or rather that royal senate,
That decides, seated on the throne,
Every wise and learned plea
There where the Etruscan voices both sift and refine
The great Mistress, and Queen of speech;
And the secretary Segni
May write the acts in the Calendar,
And may couriers send them
To monsieur l'Abbé Regnier.
What wine is that over there,
That has that golden color?
It will be the Malvasia,
That already gave honor to Trebbio:
It is true, it is;
Bring it a little closer,
And fill for me
That great cup over there:
It is good by my faith,
And it pleases me very much:
I drink in health,
Tuscan King, to you.
Before I speak of you, wise and strong King,
I wash my mouth with this humor,
Humor, that given to our century as fate,
Breathes gentle sweetness of odor.
Great Cosmo, listen. To your virtues heaven
Promises down here eternity of glory,
And my oracles, without any veil
Are already written in immortal history.
Then sated with years, and laden with great works,
Turning your back to this low mass
To return up there, whence you descended,
You will shine luminous around Jove
Among the Medicean Stars a new star;
And Jove himself, adorned by your light,
Will revolve more brightly around the ether.
To the sound of the cymbal,
To the sound of the crotalum,
Girt with Nebrides
Swift Bassarids,
Up, up mix for me
Of that purple,
That in Monterappoli
From the black grapes
Is so beautifully pressed;
And while they water
My arid entrails
That always blaze,
May the expert Fauns
Weave for me on my hair
Garlands of vine leaves;
Then, to the din
Of flutes and castanets,
Dancing, let them intone
Strambotti and frottole
Of high mystery;
And the drunken Maenads,
And the happy Aegipans
To that mystical, rough sermon of theirs
May they hold a drone.
Meanwhile the peasant crowd
Applauds our song,
And from the nearby hill may they tune and sound
Talabalacchi, tambourines and horns,
And bagpipes and fifes and alarms:
And among a hundred colasciones
A hundred rough country girls,
Strumming the dabbudà,
May they sing and dance the bombababà.
And if singing it,
Archidancing it,
It happens that they tire,
And for great avid
Thirst they pant;
Returning to drink
On the meadow let them sit,
Singing there
With sliding rhymes
Mottetti and cobbole,
Sonnets and canticles;
Then, saying
Exchangeable flowers,
May they always return
Again to drink
The haughty purple,
That in Monterappoli
From the black grapes
Is so beautifully pressed;
And may they marry it
With the sweet Mammolo,
That is bottled over there,
Where wild
Magalotti in the middle of the sun
Finds autumn at that same fountain,
Or rather at that stone, whence the ancient Aeson
Gave name and fame to the solitary mountain.
This cup, which looks like a puddle,
Is full of a wine so strong and so powerful,
That jokingly and boldly
It uproots the teeth and unhinges the jaws:
Almost like a well-swollen and rapid torrent
It strikes the palate and floods the gullet,
And it precipitates down so fiercely,
That it barely contains the one and the other bank.
Its mother was that steep cliff,
Where the aged Fiesolan Atlas,
In the thickest and brightest midday
Raises his flank towards the eye of the sun.
May Fiesole live, and with it live the name
Of the good Salviati, and his beautiful Majano:
He often with devout hand
Offers diadems to my sacred locks,
And I preserve him healthy
From every cruel and overbearing ill;
And meanwhile
For my joy I keep close
That great honor of his royal cellar
Wine of the valley of Marina.
But of the wine of the valley of Botte
I want to drink day and night,
Because I know that even the masters
Of those who know hold it in esteem:
It from a full and overflowing glass
Touches my heart in so sweet a manner,
That my Salvin, who has so many tongues in his mouth,
Would not be enough to tell it again.
If by chance it happens that one day he tastes it
Inside his Lombardy fat cenacles,
With the bowl in his hand the splendor of Milan, the wise Maggi,
Will work miracles.
The wise Maggi at the fountain of Hippocrene
Never drank lying liquor,
Nor on Parnassus did he have flattering
Garlands to his honored brow:
Other roads he ran; and a fair path
Rarely, or never trodden, he opened towards the ether;
Only to the gods and heroes in the golden zither
He liked to offer his great haughty song;
And he would truly be a captain,
If, abandoning the wine of his Lesmo,
He set himself to drink Tuscan wine:
For drawn by force by the powerful odor,
Having disregarded the herds of Lodi,
The Shepherd of Lemene
Would go with him in honorable company,
With his cheeks stained and full of must;
I mean him, who, as a young man, wrote
On the bark of the beeches and laurels
The quarrels of the paladin Macaron,
And the mad loves of Narcissus;
And the things of heaven most holy and beautiful
He now writes in characters of stars:
But when he sits
Under an oak tree,
To the sound of the whistle
Singing he pipes
Eclogues, and celebrates
The purple liquor of his fair hill,
Whose foot the Lambro kisses,
And to which Colombano gave the name,
Where the vines in lascivious entanglements
Are married, instead of elms, to the fig trees.
If there is anyone, whom the Vernaccia
Harvested in Pietrafitta
Does not please,
Interdicted,
Maladetto
May he flee away from my sight,
And as a punishment may he always gulp down
Wine of Brozzi,
Of Quaracchi and of Peretola,
And as a shame and as a mockery
May he be crowned with beet forever;
And on the steed of the old Silenus,
Riding backwards and bareback,
May he be struck with an infamous scourge
By an insolent obscene little satyr:
And then bound in a shameful place,
May he serve as a game for the plebeian children;
And may this horrible blasphemy
Reach him of the harvest.
There of Antinori on those haughty hills,
That have the name from the Roses,
Oh how happy, oh how
From the blackest berries
Of a ripe Canaiuolo
I press a must so pure,
That in the glasses it gushes,
It jumps, it foams and sparkles!
And when in a fair place
I taste it compared to every other wine,
It awakens in my chest
A certain I do not know what,
That I do not know if it is
Either joy, or even desire:
It is a new desire,
A new desire to drink,
That increases so much more,
The more wine is mixed.
Mix, o my companions,
And in the great vinous flood
May this, which resembles Pan,
Join and accompany us
All cheerful and festive
Capribarbicornípede family.
Mix, come on, mix:
Let us all drown our thirst
In some pulpy wine,
Such as that, which today in floods is sold
By the Cavalier of Amber,
To buy back a little musk and amber.
He has fixed in his mind
To find an odor
So delicate and fine,
That it is more pleasing than the odor of wine:
He invents a thousand chosen odors,
He makes fans and cushions,
He makes sweet perfumes,
And very rich confections,
He makes powders,
He makes sachets,
That for certain are perfect;
But the poor man does not find
An odor, that equals the great odor of wine.
From the yokes of Peru
And from the woods of Tolu
He has brought,
I am about to say,
A thousand drugs, and perhaps more;
But the poor man does not find
An odor, that equals the great odor of wine.
Sniff, Ariadne, this is the wine of Amber:
Oh what a robust, oh what a vital odor!
Only from this in the heart
The spirits are restored and in the cerebrum,
But what is more, the lip still enjoys it.
That great wine
Of Pumino
Smells a little of the apricot;
However in the middle of August
I always want it close by;
And of this I am not ashamed,
Because to drink it on the melon
Seems to me precisely its season.
But it is not allowed to every wine
Of Pumino
To stay at the round table;
I only admit to my table
That which the noble Albizzi dispenses,
And that made of chosen grapes
Makes the minds clear and quick.
It makes the minds clear and quick
Even that,
Which I now taste, and I speak of it
By sentence without appeal:
But well before speaking of it
I want to taste it another time.
You, Silenus, meanwhile listen.
Who would ever believe it? In the fair garden
In the lowlands of Gualfonda sunk,
Where Riccardi holds high dominion,
In a great palace and adorned with great gold,
A vermilion laughs, that can stand up to
The gentle pyrope of Mezzomonte;
Of Mezzomonte, where sometimes I am wont
To make my desires fully content,
When seated on a verdant seat
I fill my breast with that soft pyrope,
With that soft pyrope, nourishing and joyful,
Gem well worthy of the Corsini heroes,
Gem of the Arno, and joy of the world.
The dew of ruby,
That honors the hills in Valdarno,
Smells so much,
That for it its value is lost
By the brunette
Violet
When it sprouts from its green;
If I drink it,
I raise myself
Above the yokes of Permessus,
And in the song I become so inflamed,
That I pretend, and I boast
To compete with Phoebus himself.
Give me then from the golden jug
That ruby, which is my treasure:
All full of high fury
I will sing verses of love,
That will be even sweeter,
And more pleasing than that which is
The good wine of Gersolè;
Then, to the sound of a hurdy-gurdy,
Or of a golden reed pipe,
Ariadne, my idol,
I will praise your blonde hair,
I will praise your beautiful mouth.
Already the ardor advances in me,
Already a poison boils inside my breast,
Which is a poison of nourishing liquor:
Already Gradivus aegidarmed
With the quiver-bearing child
Infernalizes my heart:
Already in the bath of a glass,
Ariadne, beloved idol,
I want to make myself your knight,
A knight always bathed.
For reason of so fair an order,
Without scandal or disorder
Up in heaven in immense glory
I will be able to sit with my great Father at table:
And you, gentle consort,
Made immortal with me, will come there where
The high gods make a crown to Jove.
Let others drink Falernian, others Tolfa,
Others the blood that weeps Vesuvius:
A gentle drinker never gorges himself
In that smoky and fervent flood:
Today I want the sweetest Verdea of Arcetri
To reign inside my glasses:
But if I ask
For the Lappeggio
Purple drink,
Let the cellar be emptied.
Let us drink of so good a country
Mezzograppolo, and in the French style;
Let us drink rincappellato
With granella and sun-drenched;
Let us quaff in open war
Wine rolled and in the scïotta style;
And among us reveling,
Frolicking,
Let us compete to see who bottles more.
Let us bottle without fear,
Without rule or measure:
When the wine is most gentle,
It digests very quickly
And for it the little bar in the head
Never bothers;
And the anatomical Bellini
Could give faith to it,
If of the grapes and of the wines
He wanted to make an autopsy.
He at least, o my tongue,
Taught you with his fair art
In what part
Of yourself, and in what vigor
You can taste every flavor of it.
My tongue now made shrewd,
Taste a little, taste this other
Robust wine, that boasts
Of being born in the middle of Chianti,
And among the stones
The low vine, and not a stump,
Produced it
For the most drinking people.
I would long to see pierced
By a serpent in the middle of his chest
That avaricious peasant,
Who, to make his vine
More fruitful with grapes,
There in the mountains of good Chianti,
Truly a peasant,
Married it to a stump.
The decrepit wine of good Chianti
Majestic
Imperious
Walks inside my heart,
And without noise it drives away
Every sorrow and every pain;
But if I take in my hand a jar
Of brilliant Carmignano,
It rains down on my breast so pleasingly,
That I do not envy ambrosia and nectar to Jove.
Now this, which dripped from the dark grapes
Of the most stony Tuscan vineyards,
Drink, Ariadne, and keep away from it
The blue-haired importunate Naiads:
For it would be
Great folly
And a most ugly sin,
To drink Carmignano when it is watered down.
He who drinks water,
Never receives
Graces from me:
Be the water white or fresh,
Or be it dark in the pools,
This foolish and importunate one
Does not ensnare me in her love,
This foolish one, who often
Made haughty and capricious,
Quarrelsome and insolent,
With perfidious and thieving fury
Puts earth and sky upside down.
She breaks the bridges and the embankments,
And with her cloudy aspergillum,
On the flowered and green margins
She brings outrage to the most virgin flowers;
And the wavy springs
To the most stable masses,
That would be most perpetual,
Are origins of ruin.
Let the Sultan of the Mamluks
Praise the waters of the Nile,
Nor may the Spaniard ever tire
Of exalting those of the Tagus,
For I for myself am not fond of them:
And if by chance any of mine
Were ever so bold,
That he drank a single finger of them,
I would strangle him with my own hand.
Let certain meager little doctors
Go, let them go to uproot
The chicory and the raperonzoli,
Who with water think to expel every ill:
I do not trust them,
Nor do I bother with them,
On the contrary I laugh at them;
For, with so much water of theirs, I know that they have
A brain so hard and so round,
That even in practice the great profound knowledge
Of Viviani could not square it
With all his mathematics.
From my band
Far away may go
Every tub,
That fitted with water
Stands full:
The lemon-flavored water
Of Limoncello,
Be banished
From our dwelling:
Of the jasmines
I do not make drinks,
But I weave garlands
On these my locks:
Of the Aloscia and of the Candiero
I do not crave and I do not seek:
The sorbets, even if ambered,
And a thousand other fragrant waters
Are drinks for the listless,
And for dainty women:
Wine, wine everyone must drink,
If he wants to flee every harm;
And it is not at all a shame
To go mad among the glasses six times a year.
I for myself only in the case,
And only for gentleness
I approve this and then this other vessel;
And doing so, of the snowy sky
I do not fear the frost,
Nor ever in the greatest ice do I wrap myself
In the zamberlucco,
As the thin and chilly Redi
Always wraps himself
From his neat wig
Down to all his feet.
What strange dizzinesses
Suddenly make war on me?
It seems to me precisely, that the earth
Revolves under my feet;
But if the earth begins to tremble
And tottering threatens disasters,
I leave the earth, I save myself in the sea.
Launch, launch that gondola
More capacious and well furnished,
Which is our favorite.
On this ship,
That has the temper of crystal,
And yet does not fear
The angry sea's dance,
I want to go
For my gentle pastime,
As I am wont,
In the port of Brindisi,
Provided that this my boat
Is laden with drinkable merchandise.
Let us row,
Let us navigate,
Let us navigate as far as Brindisi:
Ariadne, toast, toast.
Oh beautiful to go,
By boat in the sea
Towards the evening
Of spring!
Little breezes and fresh auras,
Unfolding wings of silver,
On the azure pavement
Weave amorous dances,
And to the murmur of the trembling crystals
They always challenge the navigators to dances.
Let us row,
Let us navigate,
Let us navigate as far as Brindisi:
Ariadne, toast, toast.
Passavoga pull, pull;
For the crew does not tire,
On the contrary it happily refreshes itself,
When it pulls towards Brindisi:
Ariadne, toast, toast.
And if I make a toast to you,
So that it does good to me,
Ariannuccia, vaguccia, belluccia,
Sing me a little and sing me again
On the mandola the cuccurucù,
The cuccurucù,
The cuccurucù,
On the mandola the cuccurucù,
Passavo'
Passavo'
Passavoga, pull, pull;
For the crew does not tire,
On the contrary it happily refreshes itself,
When it pulls
When it pulls towards Brindisi:
Ariadne, toast, toast.
And if to you,
And if to you I make a toast,
So that to me
So that to me
So that to me it does good,
It does good;
Ariannuccia leggiadribelluccia,
Sing me a little,
Sing me a little,
Sing me a little, and sing me again
On the vio'
On the viola the cuccurucù,
The cuccurucù,
On the viola the cuccurucù,
Now what black with horrible shudders
Has unleashed a most fierce tempest,
That, among the horrid whistles of the thunders,
Puffs clouds of most harsh hail?
Come on, helmsman, bold and proud,
Come on, helmsman, use every art
To flee the wicked peril:
But already every counsel is overcome,
I see broken both oars and ropes,
And winds and sea still rage
In traverse.
Throw out the spars now for the stern,
And stop up, o shipwright,
The arcipoggia and the artimone;
For the ship is going
There where the end of the world is,
And perhaps even a little further.
I do not know what I am saying,
And in the waters I am not practical;
It seems to me that the sky predicts
A more rheumatic event;
Sioni descend from the aerial cloister,
To reinforce the attack with the waves,
And, for the lists of the cerulean enamel,
The horses of the sea clash in joust.
Behold, alas, that I am seasick,
And I realize,
That we are all lost:
Behold, alas, that I am making a jettison,
With very great regret
Of the precious merchandise,
Of my vinous merchandise,
But I feel a little lighter.
Joy, joy: I already see,
To bring health to the sick wood,
The golden-haired stars of Santermo
Moving in a circle on the antenna from the prow.
Ah! no, no; they are not stars:
They are two beautiful
Flasks pregnant with good wines:
The good wines are those, that calm
The storms so dark and rebellious,
That in the lake of the heart the souls disquiet.
Little Satyrs
Curly-haired,
Little Satyrs, now whoever of you
Will offer more promptly to us
Some new immeasurable
Unlimited calicione,
Will always be my darling;
Nor does it matter to me, if such a chalice
Is of ivory, or is of willow,
Or is of gold most rich;
Provided that it is very large.
He who risks drinking
From a small glass,
Makes the soup in the basket:
This haughty, this my
Dionean wine cellar
Does not accept, does not lodge
Little glasses made in fashion:
Those overturned glasses,
And those strangled goiters
Are tools for the sick;
Those wide and flat cups
Are for people not very healthy;
Little carafes,
Little buffoons,
Little jets and little murmurs,
Are toys for children,
Are minutiae, that I gather
To adorn in great abundance
The modern cabinets
Of the Florentine women;
I mean not of the ladies
But rather of the pawns.
In that glass, which is called the tonfano
The Graces joke, and triumph there;
Everyone fill it, everyone empty it;
But with what will it be filled?
Fair Ariadne with your white hand
Pour the manna of Montepulciano:
Fill the tonfano and offer it to me.
This liquor, that slips to the heart,
Oh how the uvula kisses me and bites me!
Oh how it dissolves my eyes in tears!
I am startled by it, I am amazed by it
And made ecstatic I go into a visible miracle.
Wherefore everyone, who reverently
Adorns the name of Lieus,
May he listen to this highest decree,
That Bassareus pronounces, and may he give faith to it:
Montepulciano is the king of every wine.
To such joyful accents,
With ivy and corymbs the hair adorned
The festive Bacchantes
Alternated their songs;
But the Satyrs, who had drunk their fill,
Stretched out on the grass
All cooked like garbage."
Created by d'Araprì