Cathy's Place, 7:30 pm

Cathy's passed on,
Charles tells me as he downs another.
Arctic beer with minute bubbles
Walls littered with soccer scarves
My old friend rests his aching back
The barmaid rotates in gentle efficiency

The regulars drift in to friendly greetings
Their drinks arriving without being ordered
The nations politics discussed briefly
More urgent is rising prices and the sequence of the horses

All wisened, Chinese and over seventy
They talk in polite murmurs and ripples of laughter
Andrew is happy that he took a cab to work
Cost him only RM 2.80

Max the owner put up the signs
One said "Save the mouse and eat more pussy"
There's no menu or price list,
And the bills are written in firm simple hand.

Night descends outside the darkened window
And companionable silences furnish the emptying room
I wonder at this happy scene,
Intimations of impending mortality
Or raging quietly against the dying of the light?