Portrait of a Barmaid

Metallic waves of people jar

Through crackling green toward the bar

Where on the tables chattering-white

The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.

Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,

Shroud wooden faces in their wiles --

Sometimes they splash like water (you

Yourself reflected in their hue).

The conversation loud and bright

Seems spinal bars of shunting light

In firework-spurting greenery.

O complicate machinery

For building Babel, iron crane

Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane

In noise and murder like the sea

Without its mutability!

Outside the bar where jangling heat

Seems out of tune and off the beat --

A concertina's glycerin

Exudes, and mirrors in the green

Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints

Of tentative and half-soiled tints.