Walter Benjamin Declines the Lemonade

for Dan Zimmerman

            The lemonade
                     which was poured into my glass
                              I treated analogously.

            For a good fifteen minutes
            I held
                     the glass full of lemonade
                              suspended in my hand,

           explaining it as being beneath my dignity
            to drink from it,
            and I transformed it,
                    to a certain extent,
                              into a sceptre.*

*Walter Benjamin, Notes on Hashish