The ironblack eyebrow of Hughes

raises an inch as I arrive

and like a sad A Minor Chord

Kundera sits in his corner

as I walk through this place, the void.

 

I’m offered a whiskey tumbler;

taste my soul in its afterbreath.

Virginia Woolf, the curve of her

intelligent nose running through

her prose, gives a toasts to the void.

 

JD Salinger pours red wine,

so that men, women and Gods can

line their parallel hearts again.

But the gloom continues, persists.

I fear I’ll be lost in the void.

 

I try to forget the fizzing

cortex of regret, of the holes

in our memory that are random

and guilty, of the journey I

have taken to reach here, the void.

 

In this room full of drunk writers

we wait for the magic, that spark

of inspiration, whether from

absinthe or lovers, the devil

or God, we need to leave the void.

 

Then it happens, Herman Hesse,

steering his canoe offers an

escape through the canyon of dreams

and we ride, ride on those rafters

thinking through it all of

the importance of magic in the void.