The Tuesday Poem: In the Pub Many Voices
In the pub many voices.
I alone; waiting for the woman who is leaving.
Smoke rises like a prophecy,
then curls beneath the ceiling.
The odd drinker drifts out to the gents.
Darkness and cold get in,
drunks’ voices, women’s cursing and weeping.
A dog is growling idly, his butcher
already behind the door,
reeking of hides, blood.
Predators too, the whores
are nudging up skirts;
the snakes are hatching.
Death, hardly audible,
no more than a rustle.
Raining outside; amid the leaves
the night-bird’s cry is dying.
Despair plunges down on us:
our anxieties like knives.
Glance towards the door: pointless.
Pointless: nobody anywhere.
Everywhere all is sleeping.
Alone, like an assassin.
