Photography © Glenn Bowie

 

Closing-Time Elegy?
after Philip Larkin

The poolroom sheds are empty now
And locked the drinking door,
The tallowed dregs are rimmed with rust
Where, slow across the moor,
A warden creeps behind the bare
Till the moon repines no more.

What major made his standard here?
What sergeant served his friends?
What parson took a beer of fears
One day one Sunday’s end?
Who played this long piano
That leans against the wall?
Who was it left the meadows
To drink above the pall?

Ah, drunk days are taken down,
And snoring vagrants stayed,
And police-girls grow tomorrow
From the tipsies of today,
And even public crawls can fade,
Swan Inns grown pubic grey:
But for the rush of morning truths,
No kiss remains but graves.

 

Jim Bellamy was born in a storm in 1972. He studied hard and sat entrance exams for Oxford University. Jim has a fine frenzy for poetry and has written in excess of 22,000 poems. Jim adores the art of poetry. He lives for prosody.

Glenn Bowie is a published poet, lyricist and photographer from the Boston area. He also owns and operates an elevator company that supplies custom-built elevators for clients from New England to Hollywood. Author of two poetry and photograph collections (Under the Weight of Whispers and Into the Thorns and Honey) on Big Table Publishing, he donates all profits from his books to various charities for the homeless and local animal shelters.