In the afterlife which is afternoon
Here in the snug of the Two Chairmen,
Now that the last irregular’s gone

And the handful of heroes is once again
All that stands between this life
And guaranteed perdition, then

Ken, who talks to his widowing wife,
Ken the barman, versed in rehearsal
For Heaven’s saloon, proofed against grief,

Takes a full bottle, sets it inverted
Into the bracket up on the wall,
Raises a rim to the optic and works it

Up till it spasms its sixth of a gill,
Waits for the bubbles to climb the clear liquid,
Jerks it again after every refill.

This is the spirit levelling the pyramid,
This is democracy taken by mouth.
The speak-easy surgery turning fat Sid

To a character, morphing even Keith
From tuneless drone to Orpheus,
The Sinatra lingering underneath

The unsinging skin of all of us,
Even such a habitual loser
At William Hill in Mill Street. Thus

The back end of the hum drum boozer
Becomes the boardroom of the soul.
Even the truanting Doctor Tozer,

Sensing breakdown, sits here whole
And warm in the hearth of the fending womb
All hidden well in its wooden walls.

The frosted door-glass, the bolt thrown home,
The glazed market, the muffled trade,
The felt people, the cobbles of foam.

Captain Crap from the bollocks brigade
On the high stool telling the air.
The Chief Super and Jack the Lad

Proving such a compatible pair.
Professor Shite with the Phd
He gained from the College of Love Affairs.

In this lock-door world that we
Immerse ourselves in, Loud Max Vol
And Lord Lock-Jaw alternately

Attempt to pen us in their fold
And press their pledge of enlightenment
And the high proof rainbow’s rim of gold

Whose appearance here is imminent
Any minute, any minute,
Patent as the heir apparent,

As we, with tongues now bloated mute
As bolsters or else scoured raw
With roaring, wait and anticipate.

The smoke ceiling, the vanished floor,
The deafening of the bluster bung.
The fresh digression at the door.

The old bolt thundering back again,
The frosted faces clustering,
The coins clinking, the cold entering,

The wind as weird as a theramin,
As darkness and the world fall in.

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