This is my 'treatment' (NOT an exact translation!) of the poem 'Becher am boden' from the volume 'Algabal' by the German poet Stefan George (1868-1933). The accompanying picture is 'The Roses of Heliogabalus' by Alma-Tadema and the irresistible music is Sibelius' Belshazzar's Feast. I have posted other poems by George previously. Algabalian Revels as Dawn Breaks Spilled wine, scattered cups, stench of lees and stale perfume, ungirdled loins, gaping garments. Half-naked, a slim boy pours into a drunken mouth the unmixed wine, slips to his knees on the marble floor in a heap of unclothed bodies writhing, flowered chaplets askew, bright blossoms crushed. Pose aggressive, but with bewildered eyes, he sinks into the tumbled mass as if engulfed by surging water. Sticky fragrances cling, pervade; exhaustion reigns. Bacchus, panting, passes. At the revel's ending these are doomed; at sunrise, die. Excess of roses, heated, forced to open, gaping, burning, faded. Piles of fallen petals useless now wilting red and yellow, turning brown and black. The household guardians blink and back away on tip-toe into breaking dawn. Suddenly resurgent, drunkenly again awake revellers rise through billowed blossoms stale and weary, fling back their hair and fall into the foam.