free-verse69 lines
The Old Cafe
by Arthur MacyYou know,
Don't you, Joe,
Those merry evenings long ago?
You know the room, the narrow stair,
The wreaths of smoke that circled there,
The corner table where we sat
For hours in after-dinner chat,
And magnified
Our little world inside.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
Ah, those nights divine!
The simple, frugal wine,
The airs on crude Italian strings,
The joyous, harmless revelings,
Just fit for us - or kings!
At times a quaint and wickered flask
Of rare Chianti, or from the homelier cask
Of modest Pilsener a stein or so,
Amid the merry talk would flow;
Or red Bordeaux
From vines that grew where dear Montaigne
Held his domain.
And you remember that dark eye,
None too shy;
In fact, she seemed a bit too free
For you and me.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
Then Pegasus I knew,
And then I read to you
My callow rhymes
So many, many times;
And something in the place
Lent them a certain grace,
Until I scarce believed them mine,
Under the magic of the wine;
But now I read them o'er,
And see grave faults I had not seen before,
And wonder how
You could have listened with such placid brow,
And somehow apprehend
You sank the critic in the friend.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
And when we talked of books,
How learned were our looks!
And few the bards we could not quote,
From gay Catullus' lines to Milton's purer note.
Mayhap we now are wiser men,
But we knew more than all the scholars then;
And our conceit
Was grand, ineffable, complete!
We know,
Don't we, Joe?
Gone are those golden nights
Of innocent Bohemian delights,
And we are getting on;
And anon,
Years sad and tremulous
May be in store for us;
But should we ever meet
Upon some quiet street,
And you discover in an old man's eye
Some transient sparkle of the days gone by,
Then you will guess, perchance,
The meaning of the glance;
You'll know,
Won't you, Joe?