this room and everything in it

Vice

When the waiter brought the almond liquor
as courtesy to our table,

I hesitated, remembering Augustine’s sin,
the one rewarded by nothing,

neither the delicious anticipation
nor the fall. But the fragrance of a flowering

orchard told me my sin would be rewarded
if I took my first drink in twenty years,

and even as my chorus chattered,
did the work I’m too lazy to do—

this one hates me because I’m a drunk,
this one forgives and says I sought the spiritual

in the spirit’s clear distillation, and this one
suggests the timing is right—I knew enough

to know they all could be wrong. And when
I reread Augustine just now, I found

how much I’d misremembered. As a boy,
he’d stolen pears fit only for pigs, yet ate them

anyway. He wanted to taste forbidden fruit
and so did I. My almost sin lived

for its moment with the ringing bells, wild
horses and lush tremolos accompanying a fall.

But when the music faded, I saw
two of us were there—

me and you, the one I will not hurt,
who drank my flowering orchard for me.

Maxine Scates

(Source: poems.com)