Accidental Coffee
There was a man named Kaldi who herded sheep
He fed them berries in Ethiopia but they could not sleep
He then told his friends and they tried them, too
Soon everyone worked harder and said goodbye to curfews
Not 600 years later, it had spread through the Arabian Peninsula
Then Turkey, Egypt, Persia, and Syria
There was a terrible time when the Turks invaded Hungary
But rumor has it that is when they brought coffee
From 1520 on the story goes
Coffee spilled through Europe and put people on their toes
But many people in the church they had their concerns
They called it Satanic and in hell coffee drinkers would burn
But Pope Clement VIII he gave the bitter drink his blessing
Then in 1670s London King Charles II took to his own messing
There were fears of coffee meetings and political uprisings
But by the end of the 1600s Kings Arms of Manhattan cafe was jiving
It was brought by the Dutch to New Amsterdam
People preferred tea and beer but would give coffee a chance
Decades went by and they sipped, worked, and danced
But by 1773 something forever changed the fate
Of not just coffee but the colonies' reason to celebrate
King George III went wild with tea taxes
Revolutionaries rebelled by the masses
They had the Boston Tea Party and then the war
America was born and it opened a door
Not just for freedom but the bitter, once Satanic drink
It changed the way people socialize and the way that they think
From Ethiopia to Turkey to England and the US we have Kaldi to thank and our minds to impress
Copyright © Dan Josephson | Year Posted 2025
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