7 Middagh from Gabriel Kahane by Gabriel Kahane

Benji and Carson
As the bombs began to fall on London
Were down by the Brooklyn Bridge
Drinking a toast to the moments
They had written that day.

Wystan was wrestling
over interesting passages in Henry James
In which it said
The commentator and the man are not the same.

They drank in the bar
and wrote in the parlour.

They could not hear the bombs
In the Northern Heights
They were too far away
to see those fearsome lights
but they felt them.

Gypsy did striptease
While the editor was fed up with her habits
Always naked to breakfast.
And cooked up a cocktail
that was two parts whiskey
One part benzedrine tablets.
They drank in the bar
and wrote in the parlour.

They could not hear the bombs
In the Northern Heights
They were too far away
to see those fearsome lights
but they felt them.

And their dreams were bright colored brilliant.
The kind of dreams where
poems by Wilfred Owen could be read in reverse,
and spare the seed of Europe one by one.

And glasses of sherry
were not necessary to make the days more manageable
with London calling them cowards.

They could not hear the bombs
In the Northern Heights
They were too far away
to see those fearsome lights
but they felt them.

But modern's a stillbirth
that was born before it died
in 1939
or was it '45?
And we've been attending
the longest saddest funeral
in history
without even knowing.

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