Two Poems on Drinking and Other Poetry by Talbot Hook

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O Happy Glass

Another soul inside a glass deep red—
I think on Provenance, effect and cause:
Do you begin in wind? In sun, or rain?
Inside a seed in bed, or in the grower’s head?
In winter when your climbing growth takes pause?
In summer when your jewels fill the wains?
It’s only in the thinker’s mind, this quest:
In you, a human search for Nature’s Laws.
O happy glass which holds all causes vain,
On pensive nights, dear soul, o’er all the rest,
You reign!

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Cup in Hand

an arch anacreontic rejoinder to Blake

The world in a grain of sand
Is nothing to a cup in hand;
And heaven in a wild flower
Is nothing to a lover’s bower.
Infinity within one’s palm
Cannot compete with liquor’s psalm;
Eternity you bid me hold—
Sound advice, for when I’m old.

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I Dreamed a Tree

A tree there was, I dreamed a tree,
And round me branches grew;
A trunk beneath began to rise
As toward the sun we flew.

A tree of life, a tree of green—
Young-blooded, fresh, and fair.
Birds took wing and found the sky,
Aloft in sun-steeped air.

A tree grown up, a tree grown tall,
All aged within a day;
Clouds passed by and coated leaves
With gentle, dappled spray.

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The tree grows still beneath the sun,
A rot within its heart.
A blackness—stretching, reaching slow—
Plays out its dreadful art.

An aged branch falls, the bark gives way,
The leaves come back no more,
And to the forest floor it heaves—
Last battle cry of war.

A tree at rest, a tree laid low,
Yet life still has its way.
Flowers spring where roots once crept
To greet anew the day.

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A dream there was, I dreamed a tree,
Now parted is my dream—
Did I create the tree, the rot?
So distant now they seem.

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Talbot Hook is a PhD student and occasional writer currently living in Connecticut.