Never Go Back

In the bar where the living dead drink all day

and a jukebox reminisces in a cracked voice

there is nothing to say.  You talk for hours

in agreed motifs, anecdotes shuffled and dealt

from a well-thumbed pack, snapshots.  The smoky mirrors

flatter;  your ghost buys a round for the parched,

old faces of the past.  Never return

to the space where you left time pining till it died.

Outside, the streets tear litter in their thin hands,

a tired wind whistles through the blackened stumps of houses

at a limping dog.  God, this is an awful place

says the friend, the alcoholic, whose head is a negative

of itself.  You listen and nod, bereaved.  Baby,

what you owe to this place is unpayable

in the only currency you have.  So drink up.  Shut up,

then get them in again.  Again.  And never go back.

Carol Ann Duffy