Yiannis in his bar is restless; counting covers,

cradling a cappuccino, he watches

the impossibly taut, tanned staff make money

for him in accents from the Steppes.

He stares at a waitress’s legs, remembers wild

nights, drinking with cockney spivs,

dancing film-star syrtaki with peroxide women;

flips worry beads like an impatient groom.

Yiannis lights up his one for the night; rests, where

old men have smoothed the pebble seat

shiny as an ossuary. Eclectic House from his bar,

soundtracks the mute satellite football;

Yiannis conjures the punch of rock ‘n’ roll, the smell

of patchouli and lust in the backstreets.

Bells toll from the Panagia; incense coils from a censer,

the choir chant the Kontakion of the Dead:

Yiannis recalls village girls in their innocence,

forsees his spotless wine-washed bones.

He spits and flicks his butt into the churchyard:

neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing.

—

by Patrick Lodge, from Shenanigans (£8.99, £3.99 Kindle)