"If ...."

If you can hold your breath when all about you
Are breathing gin and port and cocktail too,
If you can rightly measure that split second,
And have that precious moment duly reckoned
Ere Eros moans too soon the flight of time.
It you can stand erect and face your Mentor
Though deadly full of Raging and the Mocker,
If there can be true jests and quips and laughter
On waking on that very morning after
Though Hell's own anvil echoes in your head.
And something somewhere wishes you were dead.
If you can grin and run the dreary gamut
Of wowsers, what care you for these, for dammit
Your's is the bar and everything that's in it.
And, what is more, you'll be a man, my son.

Maybe.—

Jay —