At The Good Hotel, with white picket verandas,
they bow you in, in ways those of our kind
cannot ignore and have not been brought up to.
It just feels awkward, all the smiling brown
men bringing you drinks and suitcases and fruit
and hairdryers. We shoo them off. We try
accouterments, amenities, appointments,
and bathrobes, all there waiting. To The Good
Hotel requests for food are never outré:
still smiling, brown men bring you kippered things
and cognac, day or night. They press your shirt
and wax your shoes until you cry to go
shopping for the familiar souvenirs
the folks back home believe. You watch TV
to limited effect. They do not stream.
The Good Hotel was built in ‘86
to emulate imperial designs.
Even the tarts dressed swish; they had to come
in through the side. If here today, they look
like you and me and pay with MasterCard
and take it, too. The guests then didn’t note
the deference they paid for, just its absence.
The ice came in by ship, as did the girls.
The middle class’s ship comes in today;
that’s us, and all the rest who book rooms here.
We don’t know where the well bred stay. We eat
what Chef Bertrand suggests, sauced and flambéed,
here at The Good Hotel. We boogie nights
or walk on the beach, preferring to keep dry
our boat shoes and our pants. We burn. We take
a thousand pictures of a dozen sights.
In ‘28 The Good Hotel was hit
by mortar fire: someone didn’t like
the concept of an empire. Home grown
the tyrants flourished, visited their mews,
and died in nasty ways at local hands.
The Good Hotel pays taxes, knows no party
except the anniversary and birthday
and local fêtes, invented so that pigs
could go to Heaven holding on to fruits
three times the size of those we eat at home.
When we are home and full of sleep and fat
with indignation, prostate woes, and beer,
our photos all misplaced, new shirts too stained
to wear, except for yard work, we all call
The Good Hotel the way it used to be,
though not for us, and not again, not now.
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