“Drinking the Bees,” a Poem by Christian Wiman
From the Collection The Dance
As if in
moments lay
plummets
down which a puttering soul
might stunningly plunge
to a sun-splashed terrace
in Marrakesh:
tea so thick with
mint it conjures
kelp
in a cylinder of sea
but for the bees
gauzing the top:
and the man my guide
so unperturbed
he seems to sip
from very fur
serene even as
one
clings to his
beard and peers
with its tiny interstellar
eyes and fuzzed Confucian
face
so near the lips
it could be the bee’s
boisterous bonhomie
urging Drink, lad,
drink
before I blink
back to
Hamden
with a permanent
thirst and the sting of
dreams.
____________________________
Excerpted from The Dance by Christian Wiman. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 2026. Copyright © 2026 by Christian Wiman. All rights reserved.
Christian Wiman
Christian Wiman is the author, editor, or translator of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, including two memoirs, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art; Every Riven Thing, winner of the Ambassador Book Award; Once in the West, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Survival Is a Style—all published by FSG. He teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and at Yale Divinity School.
