Poems August 20, 2011
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We are not men for piety, penance and preaching
but rather give us a sermon in praise of a cup of clear wine.
Wine-worship is a noble task, O Hafiz;
rise and advance firmly to your noble task.
Today I’m out wandering, turning my skull
into a cup for others to drink wine from.
In this town somewhere there sits a calm, intelligent man,
who doesn’t know what he’s about to do!
-Rumi
A Drunken Man’s Praise of Sobriety
Come swish around, my pretty punk,
And keep me dancing still
That I may stay a sober man
Although I drink my fill.
Sobriety is a jewel
That I do much adore;
And therefore keep me dancing
Though drunkards lie and snore.
O mind your feet, O mind your feet,
Keep dancing like a wave,
And under every dancer
A dead man in his grave.
No ups and downs, my pretty,
A mermaid, not a punk;
A drunkard is a dead man,
And all dead men are drunk.
News That Stays News 
Nice finds. The first one is classic drunkeness as higher state of consciousness and the conduit to spiritual enlightenment (or whatever a more precise term would be in Sufic teaching).
The second is rather odd in that it turns the metaphor of dancing, usually a synecdoche of drunkeness (I’m thinking Brueghel mainly), on its head by opposing the two figurally. Dance = life; Drunkeness = death.
The language sounded like Yeats (esp. “mermaid”), and I turned out to be right. I can’t make out what “drunkeness” means here — its significations for politics or intellectual history. But it’s interesting to get the equivalent of The Most Interesting Man in The World telling us to “Stay sober, my friends.”
Argh. That should be metonymy instead of synecdoche. Shame on me.