22
Drunk again! cried the hag Respectability.
Madam, I replied with old-world civility,
One general erroneous notion I must debunk—
Re drunkenness, he who is drunk again was never drunk.
You are not drunk again with your self-satisfied rightness;
The sun is not drunk again with his glorious brightness;
Nor bird with singing; nor worm with wormness; nor a hunk
Of earth prodigiously putting forth grass, trees. Don’t funk
The issue: every soul in creation is drunk with seeing
Every other soul through the eyes of its own being,
Judging all by the values of its own precious junk.
Sure, I am drunk—hopelessly, continuously drunk
With the beauty of one who is never in stupor sunk.
Although to have made you and me he must have been a bit drunk
This uses the “Just who are you saying is drunk, me?” comic routine. Francis begins with the polite pedantry of the slightly inebriated.
The whole world is full of the wine of divine presence. This is the true intoxication, unknown to judgmental minds. There is also a drunkenness of falsity, the seeing from the blinkers of restricted individuality. Transcendent drunkenness is being in love with He who is beyond all drunkenness; although, ha, ha, He must have been tipsy to have created such as you and me.