What am I but an empty cup?
Upon whose wine You often supped
when still its offering tasted sweet,
and in its draining felt replete.

In blackest night and brightest day,
Your cup at hand did while away
the hours and aeons You recall.
The days that came before the fall.

What followed after summertime,
the autumn harvest in decline.
The winter grapes were driest yet.
They parched Your throat and left me wet.

My inner sanguine stained and cold.
My varnish stripped and flaking gold.
An echo once within, without.
An empty mould to fill with doubt.

Drank deep, and then away You turned
to any other font. I learned
that I was nothing without thirst.
A vessel thinks of owner first.

And when the drink grew sweeter still,
afraid, You left me on the sill
where frost would gather in Your stead.
I need you not, the silence said.

Long years would pass this soberly,
but time and dreams are nil to me.
I am a cup, without a soul
to hold within my tarnished bowl.

At last, Your hunger brought to bear
did eat its fill and drink its share.
And sated once again, enraged
the Lord enshrined within Your cage.

You raised me in a hand so gnarled.
A cup should know its worth! You snarled.
You cast away from empty chest
that empty thing which served You best.

A cup knows naught of loyalty,
nor love, nor hate, and cannot see
a world beyond its brimming lip,
nor warmth beyond the coming sip.

A cup is captive, firmly gripped,
but tasteless swill once swilling tipped
that cup upon the vacant floor,
and after rolled beyond Your door.

Into the hearth itself, the flame
so hot it blackened all acclaim.
Thus what was bad was never good,
not what I must, but what I should.

A vessel made again, a well
in which to quench the fires of Hell,
were there inscribed upon the rim
each evil deed and darkest sin.

No angels wreathed in leaves of gold,
but chalice on a shelf grown old.
An empty cup that eyeless saw:
I am myself and nothing more.

Penned by my hand on the 25th of Phaestian, in the year 890 AF.