15 May 2011

Club Midnight

Are you the sole owner of a seedy nightclub?


Are you its sole customer, sole bartender,
Sole waiter prowling around the empty tables?


Do you put on wee-hour girlie shows
With dead stars of black-and-white films?


Is your office upstairs over the neon lights, 
Or down deep in the dank rat cellar?


Are bearded Russian thinkers your silent partners?
Do you have a doorman by the name of Dostoyevsky?


Is Fu Manchu coming tonight?
Is Miss Emily Dickinson?


Do you happen to have an immortal soul?
Do you have a sneaky suspicion that you have none?


Is that why you throw a white pair of dice, 
In the dark, long after the joint closes?


Charles Simic
Walking The Black Cat
Harcourt Brace & Company 1996

No comments: