By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker watches men sitting with their wives, compares their bearing to a Mass, and asks whether their grace belongs to a survivor, killer, or dealer.
The speaker leaves the men's pasts unresolved through those questions. The speaker ends by describing them as shy one second before the observation, placing vulnerability beside their solemn bearing.
'The Restraunt Of Kings' watches diners who, 'Reguardless of age', 'act old taking chairs with their wives', whose 'black eyes are long' as in a Mass, and whose 'outward glance of grace sings...' of 'the survivor? of the killer? of the dealer?', men nobody knew who 'were shy, / exactly one second before the observation.'
The poem turns a restaurant into a solemn court where ordinary men carry themselves like kings or mob bosses, and its three questions leave their true identities deliberately unsettled. The final line catches them in the instant before they are noticed, suggesting their gravity is partly a pose that the observer's glance both creates and exposes.