Cheers (good health)

It’s a throw-away when glasses collide

or you might get continental and say

Santé, or try Korean, with geonbae

Or jjan if you’re feeling fluent

Travelling, light-hearted, toasting

In multiple languages, wishing

yourself and others good health

because why not, and who wouldn’t

every friend and stranger in a bar

across a noisy table, at a birthday

maybe Christmas or your team

just won or you have a drink so why not

Once a Norwegian boyfriend taught

me how to say cheers in Russian

alas it seems Nostrovia is really

the English version of Na Zdorovie

But by then I had Skål well and truly

under my hat, and knew alcohol

content of both Bokk and Juleøl

drank Pilsner at lunchtime

cin-cin (Italian) too try-hard

somehow a kind of private school

pretension or should that be public

the English are very confusing

I do know drinking makgeolli from

wooden bowls in a student pub

in Seoul, reminded me of Kava in Fiji

bula or jjan under sedation almost

nothing beats an outdoor table

by the 24/7 with a plastic bottle

of Soju and a group of halmoni

in sunshades on a Sunday morning

Cheers, jjan, goenbae, cin-cin

Sante, Sláinte, I almost forgot

bottoms up

fill up your cup

and I came to this

because

well, that good health suddenly

in my seventies has a whole new ring

to it, never mind the clash of glasses

and recalling that I took the Pledge

aged 12