Poetry Monday

The Ghost in the Martini

by Anthony Hecht

Over the rim of the glass

Containing a good martini with a twist

I eye her bosom and consider a pass,

Certain we’d not be missed

In the general hubbub.

Her lips, which I forgot to say, are superb,

Never stop babbling once (Aye, there’s the rub)

         But who would want to curb

         Such delicious, artful flattery?

It seems she adores my work, the distinguished grey

Of my hair. I muse on the salt and battery

         Of the sexual clinch, and say

         Something terse and gruff

About the marked disparity in our ages.

She looks like twenty-three, though eager enough.

         As for the famous wages

Of sin, she can’t have attained

Even to the union scale, though you never can tell.

Her waist is slender and suggestively chained,

         And things are going well.

         The martini does its job,

God bless it, seeping down to the dark old id.

(“Is there no cradle, Sir, you would not rob?”

         Says ego, but the lid

         Is off. The word is Strike

While the iron’s hot.) And now, ingenuous and gay,

She is asking me about what I was like

         At twenty. (Twenty, eh?)

        

         You wouldn’t have liked me then,

I answer, looking carefully into her eyes.

I was shy, withdrawn, awkward, one of those men

         That girls seemed to despise,

         Moody and self-obsessed,

Unhappy, defiant, with guilty dreams galore,

Full of ill-natured pride, an unconfessed

         Snob and a thorough bore.

         Her smile is meant to convey

How changed or modest I am, I can’t tell which,

When I suddenly hear someone close to me say,

         “You lousy son-of-a-bitch!”

         A young man’s voice, by the sound,

Coming, it seems, from the twist in the martini.

“You arrogant, elderly letch, you broken-down

         Brother of Apeneck Sweeney!

         Thought I was buried for good

Under six thick feet of mindless self-regard?

Dance on my grave, would you, you galliard stud,

         Silenus in leotard?

         Well, summon me you did,

And I come unwillingly, like Samuel’s ghost.

‘All things shall be revealed that have been hid.’

         There’s something for you to toast!

         You only got where you are

By standing upon my ectoplasmic shoulders,

And wherever that is may not be so high or far

         In the eyes of some beholders.

         Take, for example, me.

I have sat alone in the dark, accomplishing little,

And worth no more to myself, in pride and fee,

         Than a cup of luke-warm spittle.

         But honest about it, withal …”

(“Withal,” forsooth!) “Please not to interrupt.

And the lovelies went by, ‘the long and the short and the tall,’

         Hankered for, but untupped.

         Bloody monastic it was.

A neurotic mixture of self-denial and fear;

The verse halting, the cataleptic pause,

         No sensible pain, no tear,

         But an interior drip

As from an ulcer, where, in the humid deep

Center of myself, I would scratch and grip

         The wet walls of the keep,

         Or lie on my back and smell

From the corners the sharp, ammoniac, urine stink.

‘No light, but rather darkness visible.’

         And plenty of time to think.

         In that thick, fetid air

I talked to myself in giddy recitative:

‘I have been studying how I may compare

         This prison where I live

         Unto the world …’ I learned

Little, and was awarded no degrees.

Yet all that sunken hideousness earned

         Your negligence and ease.

         Nor was it wholly sick,

Having procured you a certain modest fame;

A devotion, rather, a grim device to stick

         To something I could not name.”

         Meanwhile, she babbles on

About men, or whatever, and the juniper juice

Shuts up at last, having sung, I trust, like a swan.

         Still given to self-abuse!

         Better get out of here;

If he opens his trap again it could get much worse.

I touch her elbow, and, leaning toward her ear,

         Tell her to find her purse.