My friend Jose (that's pronounced JOE-ZAY in French) called and invited me to a "poetry and wine and cheese something or other." I don't like poetry, but I do like wine and besides, I had nothing better to do. It was a slow Paris summer. What clinched the deal was when Jose added that the wine-poetry thing--whatever it was--was an invitation only event, and he had two free invitations.

We took the subway to what turned out to be a wine shop in the 17th arrondissement. Owner Cedric Raynaud had piled up wine cases as seats in the middle of the store. Cedric greeted us with a printed program entitled "Mille et Un Vers... de Vin." "Vers" is the French word for verse, pronounced VAIR. "Verre," pronounced the same as "vers," is a glass. So this play on words might translate as "1001 verses/vessels of wine." The poster on the window of Cedric's had a helpful drawing of what was to happen. We were to sit on the wine cases, sip glasses, uh vessels, of wine, and listen to poetry about wine.

This was poetry even I could understand. We heard about the beauty of wine, wine and wisdom, wine as a healing remedy, wine in a tavern, wine and song, wine and drunkenness written by the likes of Homer and Virgil, Balzac and Moliere, and Pablo Neruda. Actors read Jean Cevenol's "Hymn to Pure Wine" and Horace's "Song to Drink With." Omar Khayyam wrote of wine and roses, and someone named Abu Zakariyya rhapsodized about "The glass, when one fills it with wine."

My favorite line of the evening: "There's more philosophy in a bottle of wine than in books." Louis Pasteur. Since Pasteur taught us how to kill micro-organisms that would otherwise kill us, I figure you and I owe our lives to Pasteur. If Big Louis says we can find the meaning of life in a glass, who am I to argue?

Cedric kept a heavy hand on the wine spigot, filling vessel after vessel of red and white out of ten-liter boxes. At the end of the evening Cedric put out cheese, ham, pate, potted meat, prosciuto, chicken, bread, and more. While we grazed, he continued to pour...for an hour or so. Then for another hour or so, continuing to drink Cedric's red wine, Jose and I philosophized. Big Louis began to make more and more sense.

A delightful evening, almost perfect. But with one thing and another Jose and I missed the last subway home. We wound up walking the two miles back, at 1 a.m. We used the time to talk more about wine and poetry, our life filled with meaning. And then there was the next morning...

 

Paul Terhorst

Summer, 2002