Hotel

I saw the moon float low above the bay
and drench with lunar wine the world, and me,
and - black as grapes - the all-consuming sea.
Eros was its alcohol, nostalgia its bouquet.

While in a towered and turretted hotel,
entertained by music in the bar,
by undemanding music, MOR,
sit the aging, well-heeled clientele.
All past the middle of their roads:
nostalgia is real pain, it stabs and goads:

"Oh where is my moonlit girl with silvered skin?
A golden age, renaissance of the heart
where talk is poetry, life a work of art,
is what I thought our love would usher in!"

The breakfast tables are already laid
as guests drift off to bed at half-past ten.
The thought of sleep preoccupies the men,
the women plot another dress-shop raid.
The moon sloped home into the unlit sea
and left me to my sad sobriety.