You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here--
you, in ermine--
you, in rags;
To the train, to the woodsy trail!
To the street, to the gutter, to the summit austere!
With the change in your pocket--
with a thousand bags.
We have met, we have spoken, we have touched--
each, the other's body--
each the other's scar;
Now, having met, having sung, having loved in the honest hour--
discard these memories, these tongues, these sentiments and such!
We raise the hand and hail--
we lower and leave--the bar.
_______
for this.
Oh this puts me in mind of Eliot. Such a wonderful lyrical poem. It should be sad but it isn't. "having loved in the honest hour"..I love this line. An honest hour is all we can ask for in this day and age, and in this world. Such contrasts - with change in your pocket, with a thousand bags, to the gutter, to the summit....We have both of us known people like this and have been that person. Sorry for this wretched typing fren, I dopped my glasses and stepped on them. Thank goodness for the old pair carefully hoarded. Boops to you.
ReplyDelete"Having loved in the honest hour" spoke to me, too. This is wonderfully written!
ReplyDeleteI thought of Eliot too. Good one...it evokes the mood of one of those pub sings where all kinds of people (including abstainers) get together and may actually bond.
ReplyDeleteStellar lines in this poem, Shay, including:
ReplyDelete'...having met, having sung, having loved in the honest hour'
and
'We raise the hand and hail--
we lower and leave--the bar'.
The bar is a great equalizer, even as we use the term in so many other ways as well, meeting the bar and lowering and raising. I took the poem to be very much about the type of camaraderie of suffering that bars (of various kinds) cause—which, in itself can be quite wonderful, even though it’s pretty awful at the end to be left out in the cold or with a thousand bags. Really interesting and provocative poem—thoughtful-thought-provoking and with great rhythms/rhymes. Thanks. Congratulations on your book! K.
ReplyDeleteHow this reminded me of my earlier days and wondering what to do when time was called in the pub...with the walk home circular as I often went the wrong way and having to retrace my steps!
ReplyDeleteIt was always a spiritual sail which carried me through those watering holes, ghostly, mostly dead ... but a sail of hope and truth and seen things. The simple truth of childish games (maybe for me it was always I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours). Anyway, the encounter of humans in need of or flight from love could only be raw in a bar's oysterbed. Loved the delicate weave and gentle rinse of rhyme in such vinegary traces.
ReplyDeleteSo no more Shay's Word Garden? What? I've been a little MIA, sorry about that. Hope you are well.
ReplyDeleteA universal gem. Yet, particular as you are, Dear
ReplyDeleteYou are a master of the juxtaposition, never so better seen as in lines 2 and 3. The voice is both rueful and merry.. I don't know how you get that right!
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a song from my youth...
ReplyDeletethe bar, and where shall we go afterwards.
Your place or mine, or separate ways.
(of course if one has a dumpster and the other a mansion, there are only two alternatives)
Love that you left it hanging.
Excellent write!
ReplyDelete