The Best Cup of Coffee We Never Drank
Procope, where the berries were shipped,
all roasted asunder;
the proprietor would wander
about the wooden crates;
not knowing whether to brew or press or boil the beans.
The Bariste, into a hopper,
threw the berries and poured
himself a liquor—mad as a
castrato confounded
at his bitter berries unyielding cordials.
Procope! on the door-jambs is thrown
coffee. The starred ceiling,
I unscrew, inviting bodies
celestial and carnal;
gazing two hundred years through the window, I undo:
Of Diderot and d’Alembert,
Articles and Aourous;
Of Danton and Robespierre,
I un-inspire fright;
while, cloist’ring about, tourists serve themselves to the door:
Americans without our ‘bonjour’.
And, from Lourdes, they arrive
as undesirable paeans,
tainting their memory
of their capital, while planning for next year in Rome.
Procope! dispensing one more tasse
is not necessary ‘til
Disneyland and the Vatican
no longer hold their sway.
Your institution is saved in nostalgic spoon clinks.
Some prophecies are facts; Just as a
‘…container a ashes
…thrown from the sky…could burn the land
and,’ ‘The young lion will
overcome the old one in a martial field by a single duel…’
On vacations, we will ‘measure
[our lives] in coffee spoons’,
Waiting to drink from china whose
lips touched Franklin’s
and Jefferson’s Democracy and Deism;
From a natural bridge from Virginia
to little old Procope.
These prophecies will sublimate
until a demi-tasse
of express has left us scrounging in our pockets for that last bitter dreg.
