Dining Alone
Dining Alone
Original Text
S. P. Zitner, Before We had Words (Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002): 52.
1So all of you decided not to appear
2for our usual at the usual time and place.
3No doubt you had good reasons:
4Richard, swimming the Hellespont to Port Colbourn?
5Howard, in extremis with some deadline?
6Kildare? I must ask his travel agent,
7Don, in the boondocks at a robin’s twitter?--
8leaving me to face four empty chairs
9and dine alone in the best of company.
10The waiter was polite, the management grave,
11just short of suggesting that I order enough
12for five, since I had claimed our large round table.
13After waiting the canonical fifteen minutes
14for savants and artistes, I ordered in revenge
15what you all like best, then craned my neck,
16hoping for a breathless, last-minute entrance.
17None. A stigma, dining alone, though most of us
18will end so--pray not through tubes--and yet,
19what better than raising chopsticks to one’s lips
20with the choice bits of every dish that pleases,
21and without the distraction of half-chewed talk,
22thinking fondly of our absent friends,
23yet not missing them too much,
24supposing they are at other pleasures.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011
Rhyme
Form
Special Copyright
Copyright © McGill-Queen's University Press and used with its generous permission and with the agreement of Fred Tronly, the Poet's literary executor.
Authorization to republish this poem must be obtained in writing.