Mudcrab at Gambaro's

        for Tom Shapcott

At Gambaro's, we are fearfully pleased
to light on land-agents in threes
and fours for lunch.
They check us for affluence
and return to their talk.
Well, and so the Big Boy's coming back –
did he tie it up?

Conducted, placed,
we toast the midday feast.
Morning's boom holds up,
zooms into the order of mudcrab.
You pour, you tumble
ice, you burrow the bottle. I tipple and wonder
how light's wine-colour.

The pallid easy oysters
pass, precursors
to here it comes! the roseate big'un!
platefuls of plated pincers,
shanks, joints,
every one neatly smashed, our own Big Boy,
heaped up high.

We eat, ingenious and attentive.
The land-agents breathe heavily.
Among tables, through the room
grave women come
gathering greaves,
flanges, splinters we forced with hands bleeding –
devotees
of smooth encapsulated
flesh, the tingling white
of beachsand at daybreak.
Staggering, the land boys push back
their dogged chairs.
Mere steak. They diminish sweating in the late-lunch glare.
We are mudcrab, and air.