János Háry’s Drinking Song

Háry János bordala

                                        for the Alisca Wine Society

Not women’s heat but cellar’s cool
Tempts me to plunge my pleasure tool
My sampling tube deep in the cup
And kiss it madly higher up

Not ripe folds it’s an old furrow
Where I still slither to and fro
The rusty key still fits the door
The press-house opens ask no more

Oh sampling tubes of ripe sunshine
Oh twilight-bodied noble wine
Spilled by the Lord (who lost control
Perhaps around the lower hole)

The sun that wine-barrel on high
Rolls through the cellars of the sky
Then down it trundles in the night
We’ll meet one day at least we might

When in a heavenly vineyard
I’ll rest my elbows on the hard
White-marble table of the moon
To use the earth as my spittoon

And leaving my old pipe alone
I’ll tap the barrel of the sun
To drink from heaven’s demijohn
Red wine at sunrise white at noon

Translated by Peter Zollman

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From Selected Poems by István Baka

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