GOING UNDERGROUND

It smells in this rotten damp café,
In the crypt of a cathedral underground,
I smell onions and stale dampness.
I hear the ‘clink-clink’ of the cups.
Lawyers greyly read case-notes,
Their striped garments zebra-neat.

I am reading a letter, dense with hidden meaning,
Its contents waiting to entrap my senses.
There is no pleasure in her words,
Her art is in what she has not said.
My answer must wait until Tuesday week,
When I am finally fit to offer a response.

The table thanks me for not smoking.
I thank the table for not losing a leg.
The seaweed stench of cabbage joins the onion.
The nauseous odours make my head reel.
The serving staff speak like imbeciles,
Annoying to the point of uselessness.

The man next to me has a head like a bullet,
It comes to a point above his Vulcan ears,
A few wisps of needle-thread hair scrape over his pate,
He sports a struggling shaving-brush goatee beard,
And looks unhappy to be in this dungeon,
But he’s nowhere near as unhappy as me.

My tea tastes like thick and soupy gravy.
Product which Mr Colman has rejected as undrinkable,
Dun-brown with scarcely a hint of milk, the great leveller,
Yet I drink it down to the very last dregs,
Where it settles uncertainly in my stomach,
And joins the bile that I read from her letter.