Poetry Slam Friday

Ramon appears to be missing, and I like routines.
I hope his back is not flooring him.

A prize goes to the first who can identify this poet.

It is an untitled poem about a pub. You can’t find this online. You have to be a literary dork like me and have this poet's collected works and letters, and find little gems like this in the appendix. This poem was not part of any collection that has been published. It’s just a curiosity, a jotting... but reading it, I got the feeling that I had been to that pub before. We all have.

Clue: If anyone was going to invent a word like 'gobgreen' it would be Gertrude Stein. But if two people were going to invent the word, this poet would be the second one.



Sooner than you can water milk or cry Amen
Darkness comes, psalming, over Cards again;
Some lights go on; some men go out; some men slip in;
Some girls lie down, calling the beer-brown bulls to sin
And boom among their fishy fields; some elders stand
With thermoses and telescopes and spy the sand
Where farmers plough by night and sailors rock and rise
Tattooed with texts, between the Atlantic thighs
Of Mrs Rosser Tea and little Nell the Knock:
One pulls out ‘Pam in Paris’ from his money sock;
One from the mothy darkness of his black back house
Drinks vinegar and paraffin and blinds a mouse;
One reads his cheque book in the dark and eats fish-heads;
One creeps into the Cross Inn and fouls the beds;
One in the rubbered hedges rolls with a bald Liz
Who’s old enough to be his mother (and she is);
Customers in the snugbar by the gobgreen logs
Tell other customers what they do with dogs;
The chemist is performing an unnatural act
In the organ loft; and the lavatory is packed.