Classic Poem

In the common mind a corked bottle,
that Senate's egg, today the prohibition
we all feel has been a little lifted

The sick carpenter fished up another bottle,
empty, from his cellar
for me last week, an old ginflask —

What a beauty! a fat quartflask of
greenish glass, The Father of His Country
embossed upon one side of it
in glass letters capping the green profile
and on the other
A Little More Grape Captain Bragg

A noteworthy antithesis, that, to petty
thievery on a large scale: generous
out of the sand, good to hold and to see —

It approaches poetry and my delight
at having been even for a moment shored
against a degradation
ticked off daily round me like the newspapers

An old, empty bottle in my hand
I go through the motions of drinking,
drinking to The Dial and its courtesy