What does Sean O'Brien means in the poem "Leavetaking," especially about the patronne, things happening around him, and the end of the poem?This is...

O'Brien is eulogizing Peter Porter who has passed (see the
title, "Leavetaking"), but writing as if Porter were still with him. O'Brien notes the
setting: a place where O'Brien have both visited on separate occasions (Chateau
Ventenac). "Une pression" is beer (in French). He recalls Porter would have preferred a
Minervois (red) wine. O'Brien uses the phrase,

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Bad news prefers its poison cold and
long...

saying that good wine
should not be wasted over bad news (death), but saved until a more appropriate time,
after an "acceptable" interval (space of time) of mourning has passed. O'Brien writes
that the wine might be enjoyed at midnight—when everyone sleeps—in
a spot where a Nazi colonel once sat, waiting...a tidbit of information that Porter
would have tucked away to think on later; but gone, "there is no
later..."

The author notes that everyone must die,
including flute-playing psychopaths. (This may refer to the Hitler Youth, who were
heavily involved in music.) But O'Brien refuses to be "reconciled" to the idea that
death comes to all: though it may happen—why must it include
Porter?

O'Brien describes the scene around him: the boats
come into their slips. Last fall's leaves gather around them, and
on the deck chairs that speak of "former merriment." Someone starts a fire, and the
flames are like poetry. O'Brien stops to ask Porter if O'Brien has included enough
details yet, admitting that Porter would have been quicker than he to know when such a
mundane gathering would be transformed and become poetry: a piece of
art.

The owner of the place (la patronne) enters the scene,
critical of the fire. The bartender arrives on his bike to take in the bickering that
has erupted, viewing it with quiet humor—it makes him smile. O'Brien compares it all to
an artistic event: a poem or play, but a dark one ("black-edged
pastoral").

His friend's philosophy
was:

The
world...exists

Not to be
understood

But to demand
conviction.

O'Brien agrees,
but does that matter? The "dancers" have arrived: party-goers?—
accompanied by men looking like George Chakiris (leader of Jets in the
film West Side Story).

O'Brien lays
out the scene before him: a slice of life—not Shakespearean until he and Porter would
study the tableau before them over a beer—when Porter would turn the
scene...

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...into a poem in the high nine
hundreds...

(The
Dewey Decimal System assigns 999 to "extraterrestrial," so perhaps the poem would be
"out of this world...", especially in that Porter has
died...)

O'Brien has not yet learned Porter's lesson. "Work
is good...like love and company." However, the "courteous deaths" (those who pass
quietly?) do not agree. An obscure reference to Dionysus* and his band of sea women
going to war makes me wonder if O'Brien is saying that death uses such women (or
Harpies—snatchers—or the Fates?) to collect the
dying:

Sent
from a place less beautiful than
this...

Perhaps these
"deaths" cannot understand this world. Maybe O'Brien believes Heaven could not be as
glorious as where he now sits.

This place the death or
women come from may be in the shade, out of sight, where evening and songs end—for no
one is left to sing...perhaps because in the darkness lies the end of all
things.

*Addtnl. Source:
http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Ariadne.html