COCKTAIL HOUR

COCKTAIL HOUR

The smoke-grey glass cocktail-shaker is shattered now past repair. Fifteen years in secure tea-chest darkness it rested

safe among spiders. Used once almost daily, redolent of gin and vermouth; but that was in another country, before the long dark hiatus. Six months in our cosy new home -

translated carefully, put on a shelf out of harm’s way twice more to be brought out, to stand frosted with ice

at the festal dinner-table twice more to mark off

the passing of the years. Now splintered jagged sides

curve up into nothingness, trace the unbroken shape: a crumbling perimeter of roofless half-demolished walls

that still defines a ruined building once containing life. Civilisations rise and fall. Love is fragile. We are all glass.