In the Company of Gin and Absinthe
We are in a bar in an unknown time and place.
Men and women sit and view the world through the lens of a smoke clouded, gin-hazed Absinthe glass. There is silence pierced by the occasional outburst.
The urgent tapping of a telephone receiver.
‘Mamma, sono Io!’.
An accordion strikes-up, but far off down the street and the tune is still unfamiliar.
A passer-by just outside the window hurries past and the drinkers catch a few words,
‘Wir sind alle in einer Welt voller Lachen und Tränen’.
Is he an itinerant poet, an actor reciting their lines on the way to the theatre or a mad man? Or is it all imagined and there was no passer-by, just the voices in my head?
And, am I the viewer or the viewed? At this point we know not.
‘Herr Ober! Bitte, noch ein Glas. No, make that a bottle’.
It could all end tomorrow.
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