By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"The Restraunt Of Kings" watches ordinary diners assume an almost ceremonial power, making the act of ordering feel like a small drama of rank and threat.
The title enlarges the scene immediately, and the poem follows by turning chairs, wives, skirts, tables, and wine into stage properties of authority. The men seem old not just in age but in posture, carrying a practiced heaviness until the instant before choice exposes them. The final question of whether grace belongs to survivor, killer, or dealer keeps the elegance uneasy and faintly predatory.
'The Restraunt Of Kings' watches diners assume a heavy, almost liturgical authority, their grace turning faintly predatory just before they order the wine.
The title inflates an ordinary dining room into a court, and the poem follows: 'Reguardless of age / They act old taking chairs with their wives,' their black eyes 'long' 'As in a Mass.' Skirts and tables become a 'chorus they will not mention,' props of a suppressed rank. The unsettling turn is the triple question -- the 'outward glance of grace sings... / of the survivor? of the killer? of the dealer?' -- which keeps the elegance menacing. The clinching image is exposure-by-choice: these unknown men 'were shy, / exactly one second before the Observation,' the capitalized 'Observation' freezing the social act into something watched and ceremonial. Source title spelling 'Restraunt' and 'Reguardless' are kept verbatim.