University Night Out

Does the shoe fit?
In the bronze half-light
Where eyes shine
Laughter flows, natural as water
Jokes are blown like bubbles
Lifting the soul
Stories are told, new and old
Like bric-a-brac in an antiques parlour.

A Guinness goes, quick, like an oil slick
Her rosebud lips
Hope is the smell of new-cut grass
Felt in the pit of the stomach.

Robins come and robins go
At the bird table
Some bring, some take
Compliments are bottle tops
And the magpies wait.

And enemies are alligators
With jaws that crush
And sweethearts more than crocuses
With cheeks that blush.

Philosophers are kings
(Here, it is the way of things)
Ghosts and ghouls sit on stools
Amid the half-glass
Words are swords
Descartes and Socrates
Hitler and Herod
Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King.

An hour slumbers fast, like a pussy cat
On the hearth with balls of wool
Unrolled, unwound, unrolled again
Gordian knots become a game
Men are knitted toys
(women too, you know)
If the shoe fits.

And what am I when the chiming stops?
Friends' faces like Salvador Dali clocks
The silver slipper - does it fit?

Yea, Cinderella waits for me
But only in my dreams
How quick they come undone
Reality's no fun.

I am alone, and morning has begun
I am alone
Me, myself and mine
And all the world
That lies
Beneath the sun.