It’s warm and cozy in the old Irish bar - 

A refuge from the rainy and cold night outside.

I am drinking a glass of a strong, dark stout

Feeling a bit lonely - I don’t know why,

and the night is slowly passing by.

I am a little tipsy and seeing it all in a blur

And think that the smell of old and mold,

and the sticky floor is mixing well with every slur

Which is drifting occasionally from the back - 

where Laura and her friend the Czech -

They are an elderly couple with a spunk

I know them well, well now they are quite drunk.

Laura must have been pretty once and her man could have been the same

You know him - the Czech, oh what the heck

He is beyond description - tall and rosy

He always brings to laura all those poise.

Next to me is sitting Joe, he’s such a geezer

Drinking whiskey - he’s quite the teaser,

He mocks my job and silly rhyming

To him, it sounds like a cat’s whining.

He is quiet now although he usually never stops to talk

And is listening to that old classic rock,

An old song from the time when he was thirty-two

He said that it reminds him of a girl he knew

And maybe he is missing her sometimes too.

He’s been talking all night long of sad things,

How people meet and someone new is born to love

And then another dies and gets the wings

To make them space into this world so they can live.

Joe appears older, crooked, and tall,

In the mirror, behind the counter on the wall.

“I wish I wasn’t old” he utters out of the blue

“How old are you” he’s asking me, “I’m thirty-two.”

“Oh is it so?” he is silent, thoughtful for a while

He is somewhat sullen but is giving me a smile.

“It’s early to worry of an old age then,” he said quietly

And I feel a little sad for the good old man. 

He takes a sip and embarks on a trip

To the bathroom - quite unsteady on his feet.

Two guys are sitting at the far end of the counter

At the sight of him, uneasy and his saunter,

One is saying with a snicker, “what a drinker.”

I am raising up my glass

“He’s not really a drinker but a thinker.”

They are smiling and are drinking to the cheers,

and go back to talking to each other about their fears

That only such a dark, rainy, lonely night can bring.

Then, “bang”, the door is opened with a swing…

A woman’s stepping in, brought in by the wind

She’s coming towards me and sitting on Joe’s seat

And my heart’s pounding yet decides to skip a beat,

for she is very pretty, but I ain’t feeling any fear.

She’s taking off her raincoat and is ordering a beer.

Then “Hello” and we start a conversation

I shouldn’t shorten it but in summation

We are getting along and maybe a new love will come

Before the wretched night ends 

And rises up the morning sun.

As we are falling slowly, yet a bit fast

In that sweet feeling which might even last

Suddenly it’s getting so cold and dark in the bar

As if the lamp above is throwing now its drab light from afar

And my beer suddenly tastes strangely stale.

What is that subtle and so vile smell of decay -

One cannot perceive it quite well

And yet everyone inside the bar can tell,

That it is there?

“Hey where’s Joe,” I hear it, and in the air

Is a feeling for something new, yet well known

I am getting up and go to the bathroom door.

I open it.

Inside the bathroom is Joe - dead, lying sideways on the floor.

Then - cry, an ambulance, remembrance, and much beer

Ant last the night’s ending the morning’s near

At the first sight of the sun and the last lonely star

Me and Vera - this is her name,

Say goodbye to the rest and leave the bar.

We walk out both sad and happy, holding hands

And maybe it is quite sudden but this is how the poem ends.