It's not like Degas.
He's alone but not alone
in the noise of the meyhane.*
There's no woman near him,
but the friends drink to decades of
lost loves, failed marriages,
grown children, and regrets in sips
of cloudy liquid.
 
The glass sits before him, surrounded
by companions of cheese, olives, and melons.
These are the last brothers of the rak ı :
itself a lone Ottoman watchman of friends
sitting shoulder to shoulder hoisting their
glasses to honour.
 
The waiter pours three fingers of clarity
before the water clouds the melancholy.
For Reşit there's no ice, but there once was a time.
He stares, his face wrinkled as if smoke worn,
dreaming into the turbid liquid, the hopeful sparkle of
his blue eyes visible to those who care to look
through their own haze.
 
It's not like Degas.
This is no basement hiding from the
weight of exploitation seducing the
loss of dignity through absinthe.
This man knows his loss, and like a parched
seed on the Anatolian plain, knows his
purpose, when the rain falls and the rakı
is poured.

* A meyhane is a type of Turkish restaurant. Rakı is an
alcoholic drink made from dried grapes and aniseed which turns
cloudy when mixed with water.