Water Of Life

“Will ye tak’ soom watter wi’it, lad?”
he asks, tipping up the dusty and unlabelled bottle,
pouring out the golden spirit
like molten metal from a crucible.
I shake my head, imagining
that local water tastes of dead sheep on the dales.
I lift the glass up to the lesser light
of sunshine filtered through the distilled fire:
A liquor long sought by alchemists;
an elixir of eternal life, poised
on the brink of drinking down a poison
purer than spring rain on meadows
bright with buttercups. A bouquet
so strong, I can sense the flock wallpaper
clinging grimly to the walls and the very mortar
holding stone to ancient stone being prised apart.
I raise it to my lips and tip the fluid,
thick as varnish on oaken beams
and smooth as glaciers on my tongue.
So hot, my senses say it must be cold
as fimbulwinter. The gallop of its progress
down my throat portends the hooves
of the Four Apocalyptic Horsemen
who will thunder across my skull, come morning.
As universes die and flare anew
in the cauldron of my stomach, so my hand
plonks down the drained glass upon the bar.
I request another, with the rash unconcern
of one who does not fear to die,
having tasted the very flames of hell.
My voice emerges, high pitched and rough hewn,
in a language old as rocks worn down to dust.
I cannot see nor even feel my face,
surely red as any devil’s beneath
a mask of perspiration. I drink
to the damnation of my soul, visible
as a kirlian vibration; a pulse and swirl
of revelation, clear as the abyss
into which my thoughts spin: A coriolis
effect, while the water of life goes down the plughole.