Three men sitting in a room on the second floor
the small square gas-fire bubbling and they drinking porter
and the smell of the bedroom and the men and their porter.
The thick air quiet between the smoke there in layers
Power on this side, Mooney there, and Keating in the middle
the elderly host in the basket-chair.
There were anecdotes and stories – no singing, only stories
all were obscene and fourteen were blasphemous.
In the pause while the gas-fire bubbled and the chair alone creaked
they searched their personal jakes and almost invented
and from the chipped whitey jug they poured the thick porter, the
impotent groping lascivious bastards.
Keating cocked his ear to the door, on his face a mean and yellow suspicion
secretly up from his chair creaking after him
flung open the door with a gregory gesture
and stared at the bloody great fiend on the far side of the landing
‘It’s a bloody great fiend’ he said closing it quickly
and the rotten yellow blotched faces gaped over their porter
dirty blue teeth in their mouths the informers, three-masons.
After a while the door swelled inwards, shuddered open and they watched it unmoving
deliberately on the bare floorboards he stepped up to Keating
Raised arms no protection against the messenger’s crowbar.
Immeasurable strength in the quietness; the dulled hacking of iron:
smashed him in his grease-spotted clothes, arms, egg-head and shoulders
And without drawing breath he smashed Power and Mooney:
Whispered ‘They sent me for you, so they did’ with a simper
‘But I had not gone for to crackle the jug.’