Through a glass half-empty

The stranger is right, he can read my mind:

This is no way to live, I am thinking, no way at all.

But then the stranger asks me

if the world could be any other way

and, as I peer through my half-empty glass,

I reply, “This is the only world there could be,

and chaos, carnage and cruelty keep it turning.”

The barman looks at me pitifully

as I order one for the road.

“Make that your last, sir,” he says,

“drinking alone isn’t good for you,”

and when I turn back, the stranger is gone.

So when I raise my glass

the only one who joins my toast

to the world that cannot be any other way

is the stranger reflected in the mirror behind the bar.

—0O0—