IL CAFFÉ,...DOLCE, AMARO, INDOMABILE SERPENTE

Delighted to find a poem by the counter of the Casa del Caffé in the Campus Martius—a tradition in Italy, it seems—so that even the hairdresser's business card is full of rhymes— "Coffee, it rustles my soul,

like wind on the mount

that breaks in amongst the oaks

and loosens

and agitates the limbs,

sweetbitter,

indomitable serpent"

& after some research—dying to know which genius had written this, the grinder unknowing against our queries—I discover it's the genius of slight adaptation, of Sappho's fragment 130:

some addicted soul who stuffed coffee in the place of Eros.