Under the Blue Ball

Here's where the glittering queen bee descends

every night, with a creak from the rickety spiral,

ducks under the lintel where strangers' heads crack.

Here's where curmudgeons guard seats by the fire,

the inglenook regulars tapping their pipes out

where roll-ups and full strength have kippered the walls,

where bluebottles buzz in with stable lads steaming

like horses; where bets are laid, arrows thud, dominoes clatter

and cribbage gets rowdy with one-for-his-nob of a Friday.

When the bitter gets lively a knife skims the froth, the mild's

dark and dangerous, tasty as treacle, the Stingo's a kick to it,

Barley Wine's kept out the back for the brave or the foolish.

At last orders the landlady holds up the ceiling, wedges the door back

to let out the fug, and over the road the dead shake their headstones

to Country & Western played on the jukebox, or Victor Silvester

slipped in by the landlord. While invisible feet tread the boards

overhead, the hands of the long-dead lift latches at midnight

to join in the lock-in with hippies and huntsmen, jowl by cheeking

with blind-eyed law officers, majors and grease-monkeys,

chippies and shareholders. Butcher and cheese-maker, flagstone

and fag-ash, here's the whole world under rafter and roof-thatch.

Susan Utting