Last Orders in the Snug: Three Small Poems for a Dublin Pub

Every city has its churches, and some of Dublin's best ones serve stout. I do not mean that as a joke about drinking. I mean that a good pub, the old kind with a snug and a fire and a barman who remembers your mother, is one of the last places where people gather without needing a reason.

These three poems were written over one winter in the same back room. I never brought a notebook in. I wrote them on the walk home, before they could leave me.

Three Poems

I. The Snug

A door within a door.
Frosted glass, a little hatch
where once the women sat
and ordered without being seen.

Now it is just us,
four coats on one hook,
and the fire making
its small speeches.

II. The Barman

He pulls the pint in two halves
the way you'd tell a story,
the pause in the middle
being the whole point.

He knows who takes a straw
for their mineral,
who wants the match on
and who wants it off.

III. Last Orders

The bell, and then that softness
that falls on a room
when everybody remembers
they have somewhere else to be
and decides, for ten more minutes,
that they don't.

What the Back Room Keeps

I have seen engagements in that snug, and one break-up, and an old man who came in every Thursday to sit in the corner and read the death notices aloud to anyone who would listen. Nobody minded. Somebody always bought him a small one.

A good pub is a room where being alone and being with people are allowed to be the same thing.

A Few Things I Have Learned

• The best seat is never the one with the view. It is the one near the fire, facing the door.
• Say thank you to the barman by name. He will remember it longer than you think.
• Stay for last orders at least once a winter. It is a kind of liturgy.

When the lights come up and we step out into the rain, there is always a moment on the footpath where nobody wants to be the first to leave. Then someone says right so, and we scatter, carrying a little of the fire with us, all the way home.

Cover: Photo by Bee on Unsplash.