Greek café
Today at this waterfront table in the breeze under an awning,
the stink of hot stubs.
It’s not illegal here. She has every right. I need only
meditate on what it’s doing to her lungs, forget
a daily train-ride in carriages so packed I’d stand with my nose
in a stranger’s gabardine and overhead all of them were smoking,
my breath clogged;
the staff-room door opening and them all there, leaning back,
sweeping their hands down in great relaxed circles,
breathing out this smog;
shops, hallways, waiting rooms, sitting-rooms, kitchens, bathrooms,
gardens even, infested with it, concentrated in fumes
puffed in my face for a joke;
Today at this waterfront table in the breeze under an awning,
the stink of hot stubs.
It’s not illegal here. She has every right. I need only
meditate on what it’s doing to her lungs, forget
a daily train-ride in carriages so packed I’d stand with my nose
in a stranger’s gabardine and overhead all of them were smoking,
my breath clogged;
the staff-room door opening and them all there, leaning back,
sweeping their hands down in great relaxed circles,
breathing out this smog;
shops, hallways, waiting rooms, sitting-rooms, kitchens, bathrooms,
gardens even, infested with it, concentrated in fumes
puffed in my face for a joke;
skirtings from which a dead man’s nicotine seeped up
to stain white paint time after time; the day a friend
started to pant on gentle slopes.
to stain white paint time after time; the day a friend
started to pant on gentle slopes.
Today I passed pieces of lamb and goat, spitted above red charcoal
on sea-front braziers, saw smoke curl up the way ancient writers
describe it rising from roast meat, offered to the gods
on sea-front braziers, saw smoke curl up the way ancient writers
describe it rising from roast meat, offered to the gods
so they’d grant favourable winds or ease a soul
on its way to the underworld.
on its way to the underworld.