Lines Written After A Friend Called From The Dublin House

By Elliot Slater

My friend, the message that you’d called,

(And where you called from)

Sent me outdoors; the stillness of all

The snow, blue in the city lights, mum

About my long, jealous smokes and envious ales.

I thought of you alone, if solitude loving

Is ever lonely in such ease and comfort.

I was here, and wondering what you were having

And what small talk you made, and to what effect.

To that splendid day my mind returns

What, four years past? Edward in the library

With maps of yore, us finding Scott and Burns

And laughing under the Manhattan sky.

The Dublin House was pink-harped serene,

The barkeep in white apron and shirt

Smiled, his face another map, the scene

Lamp-lit wood and mirror, saloon as flirt.

Beside ourselves, we pleasured lascivious stout,

Wanton, drawn out smokes, the barroom tarrying.

Like Tam we bowsed and reveled in not

Being at home with attendant harrying.

Then, the seducer made his move,

Inveighing with whiskey two unbidden jars.

That sly, twinkling Hibernian cove!

(His sort has long made for happy bars).

Setting them before us with the élan

Of a fellow sufferer. “Something to start

Your motors running?” Our delight childlike, and

How our motors ran! How loath we were to part!

Thus more pints, black as deprivation, bitter as obligation,

Appeared and disappeared, as they so often do.

One loves a gusting January afternoon libation

As night slips into grateful purview.

For me, this unplanned jollity far surpassed all our planned,

I like to think that your motor, anyway, continues humming

As well as when I saw you last; that you, sir, are with dram,

Are well, and that like hours are in our life forthcoming.