Lost in a haunted wood (another bar poem)

Or a portion of a poem, at least.

One of my favourite haunts these days is a bar that is also a lending library (what an excellent concept!). It's wonderful to have so much reading material available to while away the time when one is being kept waiting by one's friends!

A few days ago, I was dipping into a poetry anthology, and re-read for the first time in some years Auden's '1st September, 1939' (written - or at least conceived - when soused in a bar in Manhattan, pondering the imminent war in Europe, and reflecting sourly on the "low dishonest decade" almost over).

There's a particularly good verse about bars and barflies in it:

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.


Is that us? Sometimes I fear it is.