Wine and Kissing

by Pablo Neruda

Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal

The Kiss
By Ben Johnson

Oh that a joy so soon should waste!
  Or so sweet a bliss
  As a kiss
Might not forever last!
So sugared, so melting, so soft, so delicious,
  The dew that lies on roses,
  When the morn herself discloses,
Is not so precious.
Oh, rather than I would is smother,
Were I to taste such another,
  It should be my wishing
  That I might die kissing.

by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

  by Byron

Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,

    Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove!

Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,

    Or the rapture that swells on the first kiss of love!

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with phantasy glow,

    Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove,

From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,

    Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love!

If Apollo should e’er his assistance refuse,

    Or the Nine be disposed from your service to rove,

Invoke them no more; bid adieu to the muse,

    And try the effect of the first kiss of love.

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art;

    Though prudes may condemn me. and bigots reprove,

I court the effusions that spring from the heart

    Which throbs with delight at the first kiss of love.

Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes,

    Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move:

Arcadia displays but a region of dreams:

    What are visions like these to the first kiss of love?

Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,

    From Adam til now, has with wretchedness strove:

Some portion of Paradise still is on earth,

    And Eden revives in the first kiss of love.

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past, –

    For years fleet away with the wings of the dove, –

The dearest remembrance will still be the last,

    Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.

  By Horace

When thou the rosy neck of Telephus,

The waxen arms of Telephus, art praising

Woe is me, Lydia, how my jealous heart

Swells with the anguish I would vainly smother!

Then in my mind though has no settled base,

To and fro shifts upon my cheek the color,

And tears that glide adown in stealth reveal

By what slow fires mine inmost self consumeth.

I burn, whether he quarrel o’er his wine,

Stain with a bruise dishonoring thy white shoulders,

Or whether my boy-rival on thy lips

Leave by a scar the mark of his rude kisses.

Hope not, if thou wouldst hearken unto me,

That one so little kind prove always constant;

Barbarous indeed, to wound sweet lips imbued

By Venus with a fifth part of her nectar.*

Thrice happy, ay, more than thrice happy, they

Whom one soft bond unbroken binds together;

Whose love serene from bickering and reproach

In life’s last moment find the first that severs.

*The ancients supposed that honey contained a tenth part of nectar, and therefore the lips of Lydia were imbued with double the nectar bestowed on honey.

e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady I swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
Your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Julia Child
At the wedding of Bumby Hemingway and Puck Whitlock “By the end of the afternoon, I was thoroughly marinated with strawberries and cherries, champagne, brandy, Monbazillac, Montrachet, and Calvados, and speckled by tidbits of grass.”

Two full moons in December. Did you find a kiss under one of them? Quiet, perfect, quiet…

Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, v. I.

The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise —-

Although there is no mention of kissing, it is not a stretch of the imagination that Hafiz’s recommendation to hoard life’s subtleties might encompass the art of kissing along with the good wine.
Elisabet

By Hafiz

Now that I have raised the glass of pure wine to my lips,
The nightingale starts to sing!

Go to the librarian and ask for the book of this bird’s songs, and
Then go out into the desert. Do you really need college to read this book?

Break all your ties with people who profess to teach, and learn from the
Pure Bird. From Pole the news of those sitting in quiet solitude
is spreading.

On the front page of the newspaper, the alcoholic Chancellor of the University
Said, “Wine is illegal. It’s even worse than living off charity.”

It’s not important whether we drink Gallo or Mouton Cadet, drink up!
And be happy, for whatever our Winebringer brings is the essence of grace.

The stories of the greed and fantasies of all the so-called “wise ones”
Remind me of the mat-weavers who tell tourists that each strand is a
yarn of gold.

Hafiz says: The town’s forger of false coins is also president of the city bank.
So keep quiet, and hoard life’s subtleties. A good wine is kept for drinking,
never sold.

By Martial

The fragrance of balsam extracted from aromatic trees;
the ripe odor yielded by the teeming saffron;
the perfume of fruits mellowing in their winter season;
or of silken robes of the empress from her Palatine wardrobes;
of amber warmed by the hand of a maiden;
of a jar of dark Falernian wine, broken and scented from a distance;
of a garden that attracts Sicilian bees;
of the alabaster jars of Cosmus, and the altars of the gods;
of the chaplet just fallen from the brow of the luxurious;
– but why should I mention all these things singly?
not one of them is enough by itself;
mix all together, and you have the perfume of the morning kisses of my favorite.
Do you want to know her name?
I will only tell you of the kisses.
You swear to be secret.
You want to know to much, Sabinus.