Sank, Roo Doe Noo

I walk in through the swinging doors
To the dimness of 1920
Pennants of American Football teams litter the high walls

Woody narrow space,
The office folks are rolling up their shirt-sleeves,
Ready for the serious business of the weekending drinking

There's a space by the brass beer taps
Where I stand to survey the well-preserved memory
Different and yet similar

This is where Jake met Lady Brett
Haunted by demons of regret
Hemingway in a framed photo kicks a football (American)
Posing macho, while the bartenders come and go

In their serious glasses and spotless white jackets,
Like doctors curing aching souls,
With original Bloody Marys and peanuts

This well-travelled old wood
Envelopes my soul calmly
Mary tastes good and wholesomely spicy

"Are you an IBF?", says a fly to another,
Etched primitive on the mirror,
Papa was one, an International Bar Fly,
Like flies the conversations bzzz past me


For those present the past is an irrelevance,
I smile happily,
Harry's abides.
Low light defeats me,
And I resolve to not take pictures,
I have been here before in my head,
The memory is deeper than the fiction,
And that has lasted me 19 years,
This most significant trivial moment,
Shall suffice.

This is my coda:

You remember the pictures you didn't take
More than the ones you do
And you remember the places that don't exist
More than the ones that do
And yet if you are blessed
You might arrive at the meeting of the two.

(with respect, for Harry's New York Bar, 5 Rue Daunou, Paris)