A Poem by Bryan Murphy

Show Must

Coldest night of coldest year

in fading memory. We’re here
to entertain the survivors,
the diehard go-outs,
to raise the curtain
on a fifty-minute monologue
with ten minutes of social drama
in foreign.

We rehearse, eat, wait;

the theatre fills
more slowly than the Times crossword
on the Tube, stuck between stations;
and then we play: the fictional Bar
in the real Café, sad as a ballad.

Actors and audience collude

to wring success from solitude,
playing off each other,
for each other.
Chastened, cheered, carefully
we pack our props
and take the lessons garnered
into the unforgiving white wasteland outside.

Bryan Murphy is a former teacher and translator who now concentrates on his own words. He divides his time among England, Italy, the wider world and cyberspace. He is the author of the e-books Linehan’s Trip and Goodbye, Padania, and welcomes visitors at: www.bryanmurphy.eu