---
title: At The Quinte Hotel
tags:
  - authorship/other
  - exclude-from-word-count
  - status/complete
  - type/media/poetry
authors:
  - Al Purdy
collection: Poems for All the Annettes
type: poem
year: 1962
---
# At The Quinte Hotel

I am drinking \
I am drinking yellow flowers \
in underground sunlight \
and you can see that I am a sensitive man \
and I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man \
so I tell him the beer he draws \
is half fart and half horse piss \
and all wonderful yellow flowers \
But the bartender is not quite \
so sensitive as I supposed he was \
the way he looks at me now \
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy \
Over in one corner two guys \
are quietly making love \
in the brief prelude to infinity \
Opposite them a peculiar fight \
enables the drinkers to lay aside \
their comic books and watch with interest \
while I watch with interest \
a wiry little man slugs another guy \
then tracks him bleeding into the toliet \
and slugs him to the floor again \
with ugly red flowers on the tile \
three minutes later he roosters over \
to the table where his drunk friend sits \
with another friend and slugs both \
of em ass-over-electric-kettle \
so I have to walk around \
on my way for a piss \
Now I am a sensitive man \
so I say to him mildly as hell \
"You shouldn'ta knocked over that good beer \
with them beautiful flowers in it" \
So he says "Come on" \
So I Come On \
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess \
like a yellow streak charging \
on flower power I suppose \
& knock the shit outa him & sit on him \
(he is just a little guy) \
and say reprovingly \
"Violence will get you nowhere this time chum \
Now you take me \
I am a sensitive man \
and would you believe I write poems?" \
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face \
in fact in all the faces \
"What kind of poems?" \
"Flower poems" \
"So tell us a poem" \
I got off the little guy but reluctantly \
for he was comfortable \
and told them this poem \
They crowded around me with tears \
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly \
for my pockets for \
it was a heart-warming moment for literature \
and moved by the demonstrable effect \
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked \
"-the poem oughta be worth some beer" \
It was a mistake in terminology \
for silence came \
and it was brought home to me in the tavern \
that poems will not really buy beer or flowers \
or a goddam thing \
and I was sad \
for I am a sensitive man \
