A letter to C.H. Sisson

Dear Charles,
             I think that we first met
At Henekey's in Kingley Street,
And more than twenty years ago.
You'd not find two men more unlike -
I mean the civil servant who
Was always civil (servant to
The devil, as he defined it)
And the habitué of Soho
Who'd never had a proper job,
Like nearly everyone he knew -
George Barker, Cronin, Kavanagh,
Bacon, the Roberts, Swift and Freud,
Maclaren-Ross and John Heath-Stubbs,
Gascoyne and Sydney Graham too -
There's not much left now of that crowd.
...