The blind taster

What’s in store:
ashes, fruit?

He downed the glass
to the lees
with empty eyes.

But in his spirit –
a beast that creeps
on all fours
through the vineyard of images –

no scent of world arose,
nor of leaf-mould or debris.

Her he saw, dead and warm,
her hands on her shoulders,
a gleam of madness in her smile,
she grimaced at her mirror image
behind his back.

It was then he spewed some mulberry juice,
light that comes from the gods,
gall that comes from sugar,

it filled the urn that she
held enticingly out to him
with her staunching fingers
and her kissing mouth.

A leak though has the goblet.

Translation by John Irons.