Grape Expectations – February 2013

Grape Expectations

By Robert Kleffel and Noemí Paz

Wine
    Love
        Poetry

 

There is something about wine and romance that just go together. It seems that in every movie or novel, where romance is involved, the action begins with the couple looking at each other over a bottle of wine. The link between wine and love is not a product of the modern era. Consider Euripides, while known for his tragedies he is also noted for quotable quotes.

Where there is no wine there is no love… Euripides (484 BC – 406 BC)

Another early writer who made the connection between love and wine was Anacreon (c. 570 – c. 480 BC)

Bring water, bring wine, boy! Bring flowering garlands to me! Yes, bring them, so that I may try a bout with love…

About a thousand years ago, Omar Khayyám a brilliant Persian polymath, wrote important treatises on mathematics and astronomy. Today he is known to us from a poem he wrote called the Rubáiyát. Many a fair maid has been seduced by this one stanza from the Rubáiyát.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

 

******

 

Come, My Beloved…

Let us both drink from

The same glass

Until the bouquet

Intoxicates and fills us

With its sweet warmth

As we passionately dine

Together

At Love’s table… Marie Shine

 

Toasts and Sayings

—In water one sees one’s own face; but in wine, one beholds the heart of another… An old French proverb

—May our love be like good wine, grow stronger as it grows older… Old English Toast

—We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine…. Eduardo Galeano

—Love as you might, You’ll have your first fight… Drink this wine, While you make up all night.

Poems

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That’s all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth,

I look at you, and I sigh.

W.B. Yeats

 

I Love You

I love your lips when they’re wet with wine     And red with a wild desire;

I love your eyes when the lovelight lies     Lit with a passionate fire.

I love your arms when the warm white flesh     Touches mine in a fond embrace;

I love your hair when the strands enmesh Your kisses against my face. Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

A St. Valentines Suggestion: Purchase a bottle of fine wine – create your ownpoem or note of love – pour two glasses of wine – give her the note of love – fall in love again, just like the first time.