Night Club
Night Club
Original Text
F.R. Scott, F.R. Scott: Selected Poems (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1966): 163.
1The girls, brighter than wine, are clothed and naked.
2They pose in abandon by the pools of their laughter.
3One man is with them, but all, all are invited
4To the short-term ceremony--and something after.
5Certainly it is bogus, it is tawdry, and beauty
6Is bottled and sold for profit, yet cannot be hidden.
7Even the clap-trap adolesccent vulgarity
8Reminds us of banquets to which we long to be bidden.
9It is a hard game, living on third-rate levels,
10Getting our love through the eyes, our power through drink,
11While inside we nurse the fading image of something
12Of which the mind too soon even ceases to think.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire / Sharine Leung
RPO Edition
2011
Rhyme
Form
Special Copyright
Copyright © the estate of F. R. Scott. Included
with the generous permission of William Toye, his literary executor.