Tea

Yesterday was World Bee Day (not to be confused with World Bidet) – and, by chance, I had in my change a £1 coin I'd never seen before, with the face of our King on one side and on the other an attractive design featuring... two bees. Today – how they keep on coming – is International Tea Day. And why not? Tea, if properly made with good leaves and no milk, is a fine drink. The poets have not had much to say about tea: there's Cowper's much-misquoted 'The cups that cheer but not inebriate', and this from Basho – A monk sips morning tea. It is quiet. The chrysanthemum is flowering.And then there's Wallace Stevens's 'Tea at the Palaz of Hoon', from his astonishing first collection, Harmonium. This is not, it must be admitted, a poem about tea. It has a Wikipedia entry to itself, which I have battled my way through, emerging unenlightened and drained of all pleasure in life. So I return to the poem, which is a thing of beauty...Tea at the Palaz of HoonNot less because in purple I…