Of gardens where beneath the vines and trees One might sip beer and be consoled By music mixed with talk, behold The summer’s devotees About the tables, idling June away. And you knew chicory and cress, With French or Mayonnaise could dress A salad, growing gay As you poured Burgundy or Rhenish wine, Or had a sirloin brought to see If it were ripe, the recipe For broiling it, to dine Thereon in fitting state, the waiter took And bowed in admiration, then You snapped your silver case again And from the holders shook Such cigarettes as Turkish grandees smoke, And blew the perfumed incense forth, Descanting on our life, the worth Of lawyers, noted folk: Of judges, politicians, governors, Until the dinner came at last. And there amid the rich repast We poor solicitors Gloried in life, and ruddy faced would laugh At any mishap, any fate That we could fancy might await, And glorying would quaff Incredible goblets of the quickening juice, With blackest coffee topping all, And afterwards a cordial-- Nothing we could abuse And nothing hurt us, Edward! It was well We lived, I think, and memories stored: For now I am a little bored With the invariable And settled round of nights and days wherein I must have sleep to work, and keep Abstemious to work and sleep-- While you long since have been The tangled lion of a woman’s hair Who reads you novels and the news, And mends you, tends you, even brews Your broth and gives you care In these dyspeptic mornings. As for me The cafés, gardens haunt me yet. I go about as one who can’t forget A dead felicity-- The Bismarck, Rector’s where I enter not-- The music all is changed--and where No faces that we knew are there, And where we are forgot. MALACHY DEGAN Malachy, you stand a referee to judge Under a torrent of blue light The naked pugilists who fight, Grim faces with a smudge Of blood, or on the sliding arms or backs, There on a platform roped, in palls Of smoke to the roof of Tattersall’s, And where the iterant cracks Of matches struck for lights prick through the hum Of voices over toned by cries Of “Finish him,” “Look at his glassy eyes,” “That sounded like a drum.” When the timekeeper’s gong went clang! clang! And a hush came over us, as then Bath robes slipped off, the fighting men Out of their corners sprang, And in between the tangled arms and legs, And clinches which you break, you glide Red-haired, athletic, watchful eyed, And like a lager keg’s Round fulness is your chest, your arms all bare, Coatless, a figure memorable. You should not be forgotten--well And if it be to dare