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Alan Hardy

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Night-Porter

Spare a thought for the night-porter,
his jacket and trousers rumpled from snatched couch,
his collar and tie churlishly awry,
the bleary-eyed guy you routinely apologise to
returning to the hotel giddily late,
for a time the top-hatted white-scarfed raffish gent
smartly dropping a coin in his sweaty palm
he is your comically dismissed servile tool.

When you find yourself
waiting to open a door and doff your cap,
watching the minutes of others’ social cavorting ticking by,
you will understand that seedy look and smell
of interrupted sleep,
slightly querulous avoidance of eyes.
In the fidgety night-porter’s crumpled shame,
having to make a living waiting for others
to deign to ring a bell,
in his beaten-down eyes,
you will see the fervour and hot-headed contempt
that massacred the Tsar and bred a coup,
inspired an outrage and shot a duke.
A porter’s dull eyes and sloppy gait
is he who waits impassively with outstretched hand
to have acknowledged his inferiority,
fuming riots within.

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