The Wine Shop at Dawn

To you, kept waiting out in the storm,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. Dawn is nearly here in this town where no one has kept the year, and the wine shop has just taken down its first shutter. The envelope is dark tea-green fibrous paper, its title in delicate golden-ivory italic English; ochre woodblock prints show wine jars and eaves, with a vermilion shop chop and a narrow receipt band.

The Classic of Poetry has a poem about exactly this sort of sky: “Wind and rain, dark as dusk; the cock crows on and on. Now that I see my gentleman, how could I not be glad?” — The Classic of Poetry, Odes of Zheng (pre-Qin)

The wind and rain are dark as evening, yet the cocks are crowing one after another: day is coming. To see the one you hoped to see at such an hour, how could anyone not be glad? The rain has not stopped; no matter. Come in. The wine is warm and the paper is dry.

The cock has crowed; meet by lamplight

Storm Post Office

Year unrecorded · Before dawn

P.S. Wine goes on the tab; paper is free to take.