I am afraid - I confide in my doctor
After the operation for my duodenal ulcer
That when I am discharged from hospital
I will not be able to cope with the isolation;
That my wife having left me for her brother-in-law
And being myself a middle aged country man
With a clerical position in the city waterworks
With no close friends or relations or acquaintances
I will have no choice but to prostrate myself
Under a train at Sydney Parade
Or in my overcoat with the velour collar
Go for a late night swim in the River Dodder
With stones in my pockets.

The doctor - a burly blustering Kerryman
Plunges his thumbs into his pinstripe waistcoat:
' Self-pity's slurry, I will not allow it, wallower you.
What you must do when you leave hospital
Is learn to ride the trams.
I appreciate that you are an outcast in Dublin
But once you have learned how to ride the trams
You will have penetrated the secret code of city life.
You have no idea the numbers of unattached women
Who use the trams but I have the statistics.
At least 72% of the women riding the trams
Are in want of a man, especially the married women.
But obviously also the unmarried women.
All you have to do is ride lots of trams, lots of them,
And Bob's your uncle, Nan's your aunt,
You will have a woman in no time.

'Personally I recommend the Lucan Route
Under the Phoenix Park Walls, the Knockmaroon Gate,
But what route you choose is a matter for yourself.
For all I know your needs might be best catered for
On the Dun Laoghaire Route.
The South Side is terra incognita to me
But that it is terrafirma my registrars do assure me.
Your difficulty will be in selecting the right woman.
The crux will be cranking up
A sacra conversazione, so to speak, with the appropriate lady:
It is likely, I must warn you, that she will be living alone
With her only child - her grown~up daughter.'

As I sit bolt upright alone on the tram, a solitary epitome,
I endeavour to imagine what it must be like to be the tram driver
Glancing back over his shoulder into the laughing faces of three women
Under tinted ventilators
All handbags and conspiracy,
How as a trio they remind him of high tide at Bulloch Harbour
Beyond them, across an empty expanse of ocean
- An empty scat can be an eternity
The single. sail of a solitary gent,
His hat featherless.

Glancing back over his shoulder, the tram driver
Glances a dray,
Brakes, and I am tipped up, over and out of my seat.
The three women slide back down along the rexine,
Collapse on top of me in a caffuffle and for seconds
I am smothered in petticoats - a swansong come true.
I have always had a yen for petticoats.
Their female voices. I could listen to it all day.
Heat and light. I dare not look around.
I feel so cold myself although it is the month of April
And thirty years past puberty.
I would not recognise my own voice if I heard it,
I do not think. It is I923. I would say
I have about another seventeen years to live
Or seventeen minutes. I am going crazy
Crazy without women.