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Best Famous Cigarette Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Cigarette poems. This is a select list of the best famous Cigarette poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Cigarette poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of cigarette poems.

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Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Break Away

 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.
The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break into two cans ready for recycling, flattened tin humans and a tin law, even for my twenty-five years of hanging on by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room: Judge, lawyer, witness and me and invisible Skeezix, and all the other torn enduring the bewilderments of their division.
Your daisies have come on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish, sucking with love at the coral of our love.
Yet they wait, in their short time, like little utero half-borns, half killed, thin and bone soft.
They breathe the air that stands for twenty-five illicit days, the sun crawling inside the sheets, the moon spinning like a tornado in the washbowl, and we orchestrated them both, calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.
There was a song, our song on your cassette, that played over and over and baptised the prodigals.
It spoke the unspeakable, as the rain will on an attic roof, letting the animal join its soul as we kneeled before a miracle-- forgetting its knife.
The daisies confer in the old-married kitchen papered with blue and green chefs who call out pies, cookies, yummy, at the charcoal and cigarette smoke they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all-- the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love (If one could call such handfuls of fists and immobile arms that!) and on this day my world rips itself up while the country unfastens along with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief, as in me-- the legal rift-- as on might do with the daisies but does not for they stand for a love undergoihng open heart surgery that might take if one prayed tough enough.
And yet I demand, even in prayer, that I am not a thief, a mugger of need, and that your heart survive on its own, belonging only to itself, whole, entirely whole, and workable in its dark cavern under your ribs.
I pray it will know truth, if truth catches in its cup and yet I pray, as a child would, that the surgery take.
I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass, glass coming through the telephone that is breaking slowly, day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love like a lifejacket and we float, jacket and I, we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear and it is safe, safe far too long! And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window and peer down at the moon in the pond and know that beauty has walked over my head, into this bedroom and out, flowing out through the window screen, dropping deep into the water to hide.
I will observe the daisies fade and dry up wuntil they become flour, snowing themselves onto the table beside the drone of the refrigerator, beside the radio playing Frankie (as often as FM will allow) snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling-- as twenty-five years split from my side like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.
It is six P.
M.
as I water these tiny weeds and their little half-life, their numbered days that raged like a secret radio, recalling love that I picked up innocently, yet guiltily, as my five-year-old daughter picked gum off the sidewalk and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.
For me it was love found like a diamond where carrots grow-- the glint of diamond on a plane wing, meaning: DANGER! THICK ICE! but the good crunch of that orange, the diamond, the carrot, both with four million years of resurrecting dirt, and the love, although Adam did not know the word, the love of Adam obeying his sudden gift.
You, who sought me for nine years, in stories made up in front of your naked mirror or walking through rooms of fog women, you trying to forget the mother who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss through the keyhole, you who wrote out your own birth and built it with your own poems, your own lumber, your own keyhole, into the trunk and leaves of your manhood, you, who fell into my words, years before you fell into me (the other, both the Camp Director and the camper), you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams, and calls and letters and once a luncheon, and twice a reading by me for you.
But I wouldn't! Yet this year, yanking off all past years, I took the bait and was pulled upward, upward, into the sky and was held by the sun-- the quick wonder of its yellow lap-- and became a woman who learned her own shin and dug into her soul and found it full, and you became a man who learned his won skin and dug into his manhood, his humanhood and found you were as real as a baker or a seer and we became a home, up into the elbows of each other's soul, without knowing-- an invisible purchase-- that inhabits our house forever.
We were blessed by the House-Die by the altar of the color T.
V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage, a tiny marriage called belief, as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy, so close to absolute, so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come for the last time.
And I who have, each year of my life, spoken to the tooth fairy, believing in her, even when I was her, am helpless to stop your daisies from dying, although your voice cries into the telephone: Marry me! Marry me! and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight: The love is in dark trouble! The love is starting to die, right now-- we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.
I see two deaths, and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart, and though I willed one away in court today and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other, they both die like waves breaking over me and I am drowning a little, but always swimming among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death, I wade through the smell of their cancer and recognize the prognosis, its cartful of loss-- I say now, you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on! and the dead city of my marriage seems less important than the fact that the daisies came weekly, over and over, likes kisses that can't stop themselves.
There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten-- Bury it! Wall it up! But let me not forget the man of my child-like flowers though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior, he remains, his fingers the marvel of fourth of July sparklers, his furious ice cream cones of licking, remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.
For the rest that is left: name it gentle, as gentle as radishes inhabiting their short life in the earth, name it gentle, gentle as old friends waving so long at the window, or in the drive, name it gentle as maple wings singing themselves upon the pond outside, as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond, that night that it was ours, when our bodies floated and bumped in moon water and the cicadas called out like tongues.
Let such as this be resurrected in all men whenever they mold their days and nights as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine and planted the seed that dives into my God and will do so forever no matter how often I sweep the floor.


Written by Nazim Hikmet | Create an image from this poem

Things I Didnt Know I Loved

 it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train 
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain 
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it 
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
 and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before 
 and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky 
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish 
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard 
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest 
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish 
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves.
.
.
they call me The Knife.
.
.
lover like a young tree.
.
.
I blow stately mansions sky-high" in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief to a pine bough for luck I never knew I loved roads even the asphalt kind Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea Koktebele formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish the two of us inside a closed box the world flows past on both sides distant and mute I was never so close to anyone in my life bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé when I was eighteen apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take and at eighteen our lives are what we value least I've written this somewhere before wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play Ramazan night a paper lantern leading the way maybe nothing like this ever happened maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy going to the shadow play Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat with a sable collar over his robe and there's a lantern in the servant's hand and I can't contain myself for joy flowers come to mind for some reason poppies cactuses jonquils in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika fresh almonds on her breath I was seventeen my heart on a swing touched the sky I didn't know I loved flowers friends sent me three red carnations in prison I just remembered the stars I love them too whether I'm floored watching them from below or whether I'm flying at their side I have some questions for the cosmonauts were the stars much bigger did they look like huge jewels on black velvet or apricots on orange did you feel proud to get closer to the stars I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to say they were terribly figurative and concrete my heart was in my mouth looking at them they are our endless desire to grasp things seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad I never knew I loved the cosmos snow flashes in front of my eyes both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind I didn't know I liked snow I never knew I loved the sun even when setting cherry-red as now in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors but you aren't about to paint it that way I didn't know I loved the sea except the Sea of Azov or how much I didn't know I loved clouds whether I'm under or up above them whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois strikes me I like it I didn't know I liked rain whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train is it because I lit my sixth cigarette one alone could kill me is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue the train plunges on through the pitch-black night I never knew I liked the night pitch-black sparks fly from the engine I didn't know I loved sparks I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return 19 April 1962 Moscow
Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

Hospital Window

At gauzy dusk, thin haze like cigarette smoke 
ribbons past Chrysler Building's silver fins 
tapering delicately needletopped, Empire State's 
taller antenna filmed milky lit amid blocks 
black and white apartmenting veil'd sky over Manhattan, 
offices new built dark glassed in blueish heaven--The East 
50's & 60's covered with castles & watertowers, seven storied 
tar-topped house-banks over York Avenue, late may-green trees 
surrounding Rockefellers' blue domed medical arbor-- 
Geodesic science at the waters edge--Cars running up 
East River Drive, & parked at N.
Y.
Hospital's oval door where perfect tulips flower the health of a thousand sick souls trembling inside hospital rooms.
Triboro bridge steel-spiked penthouse orange roofs, sunset tinges the river and in a few Bronx windows, some magnesium vapor brilliances're spotted five floors above E 59th St under grey painted bridge trestles.
Way downstream along the river, as Monet saw Thames 100 years ago, Con Edison smokestacks 14th street, & Brooklyn Bridge's skeined dim in modern mists-- Pipes sticking up to sky nine smokestacks huge visible-- U.
N.
Building hangs under an orange crane, & red lights on vertical avenues below the trees turn green at the nod of a skull with a mild nerve ache.
Dim dharma, I return to this spectacle after weeks of poisoned lassitude, my thighs belly chest & arms covered with poxied welts, head pains fading back of the neck, right eyebrow cheek mouth paralyzed--from taking the wrong medicine, sweated too much in the forehead helpless, covered my rage from gorge to prostate with grinding jaw and tightening anus not released the weeping scream of horror at robot Mayaguez World self ton billions metal grief unloaded Pnom Penh to Nakon Thanom, Santiago & Tehran.
Fresh warm breeze in the window, day's release >from pain, cars float downside the bridge trestle and uncounted building-wall windows multiplied a mile deep into ash-delicate sky beguile my empty mind.
A seagull passes alone wings spread silent over roofs.
- May 20, 1975 Mayaguez Crisis
Written by Charles Bukowski | Create an image from this poem

A Man

 George was lying in his trailer, flat on his back, watching a small portable T.
V.
His dinner dishes were undone, his breakfast dishes were undone, he needed a shave, and ash from his rolled cigarettes dropped onto his undershirt.
Some of the ash was still burning.
Sometimes the burning ash missed the undershirt and hit his skin, then he cursed, brushing it away.
There was a knock on the trailer door.
He got slowly to his feet and answered the door.
It was Constance.
She had a fifth of unopened whiskey in a bag.
"George, I left that son of a *****, I couldn't stand that son of a ***** anymore.
" "Sit down.
" George opened the fifth, got two glasses, filled each a third with whiskey, two thirds with water.
He sat down on the bed with Constance.
She took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it.
She was drunk and her hands trembled.
"I took his damn money too.
I took his damn money and split while he was at work.
You don't know how I've suffered with that son of a *****.
" " Lemme have a smoke," said George.
She handed it to him and as she leaned near, George put his arm around her, pulled her over and kissed her.
"You son of a *****," she said, "I missed you.
" "I miss those good legs of yours , Connie.
I've really missed those good legs.
" "You still like 'em?" "I get hot just looking.
" "I could never make it with a college guy," said Connie.
"They're too soft, they're milktoast.
And he kept his house clean.
George , it was like having a maid.
He did it all.
The place was spotless.
You could eat beef stew right off the crapper.
He was antisceptic, that's what he was.
" "Drink up, you'll feel better.
" "And he couldn't make love.
" "You mean he couldn't get it up?" "Oh he got it up, he got it up all the time.
But he didn't know how to make a woman happy, you know.
He didn't know what to do.
All that money, all that education, he was useless.
" "I wish I had a college education.
" "You don't need one.
You have everything you need, George.
" "I'm just a flunkey.
All the **** jobs.
" "I said you have everything you need, George.
You know how to make a woman happy.
" "Yeh?" "Yes.
And you know what else? His mother came around! His mother! Two or three times a week.
And she'd sit there looking at me, pretending to like me but all the time she was treating me like I was a whore.
Like I was a big bad whore stealing her son away from her! Her precious Wallace! Christ! What a mess!" "He claimed he loved me.
And I'd say, 'Look at my pussy, Walter!' And he wouldn't look at my pussy.
He said, 'I don't want to look at that thing.
' That thing! That's what he called it! You're not afraid of my pussy, are you, George?" "It's never bit me yet.
" "But you've bit it, you've nibbled it, haven't you George?" "I suppose I have.
" "And you've licked it , sucked it?" "I suppose so.
" "You know damn well, George, what you've done.
" "How much money did you get?" "Six hundred dollars.
" "I don't like people who rob other people, Connie.
" "That's why you're a fucking dishwasher.
You're honest.
But he's such an ass, George.
And he can afford the money, and I've earned it.
.
.
him and his mother and his love, his mother-love, his clean l;ittle wash bowls and toilets and disposal bags and breath chasers and after shave lotions and his little hard-ons and his precious love-making.
All for himself, you understand, all for himself! You know what a woman wants, George.
" "Thanks for the whiskey, Connie.
Lemme have another cigarette.
" George filled them up again.
"I missed your legs, Connie.
I've really missed those legs.
I like the way you wear those high heels.
They drive me crazy.
These modern women don't know what they're missing.
The high heel shapes the calf, the thigh, the ass; it puts rythm into the walk.
It really turns me on!" "You talk like a poet, George.
Sometimes you talk like that.
You are one hell of a dishwasher.
" "You know what I'd really like to do?" "What?" "I'd like to whip you with my belt on the legs, the ass, the thighs.
I'd like to make you quiver and cry and then when you're quivering and crying I'd slam it into you pure love.
" "I don't want that, George.
You've never talked like that to me before.
You've always done right with me.
" "Pull your dress up higher.
" "What?" "Pull your dress up higher, I want to see more of your legs.
" "You like my legs, don't you, George?" "Let the light shine on them!" Constance hiked her dress.
"God christ ****," said George.
"You like my legs?" "I love your legs!" Then george reached across the bed and slapped Constance hard across the face.
Her cigarette flipped out of her mouth.
"what'd you do that for?" "You fucked Walter! You fucked Walter!" "So what the hell?" "So pull your dress up higher!" "No!" "Do what I say!" George slapped again, harder.
Constance hiked her skirt.
"Just up to the panties!" shouted George.
"I don't quite want to see the panties!" "Christ, george, what's gone wrong with you?" "You fucked Walter!" "George, I swear, you've gone crazy.
I want to leave.
Let me out of here, George!" "Don't move or I'll kill you!" "You'd kill me?" "I swear it!" George got up and poured himself a shot of straight whiskey, drank it, and sat down next to Constance.
He took the cigarette and held it against her wrist.
She screamed.
HE held it there, firmly, then pulled it away.
"I'm a man , baby, understand that?" "I know you're a man , George.
" "Here, look at my muscles!" george sat up and flexed both of his arms.
"Beautiful, eh ,baby? Look at that muscle! Feel it! Feel it!" Constance felt one of the arms, then the other.
"Yes, you have a beautiful body, George.
" "I'm a man.
I'm a dishwasher but I'm a man, a real man.
" "I know it, George.
" "I'm not the milkshit you left.
" "I know it.
" "And I can sing, too.
You ought to hear my voice.
" Constance sat there.
George began to sing.
He sang "Old man River.
" Then he sang "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.
" He sang "The St.
Louis Blues.
" He sasng "God Bless America," stopping several times and laughing.
Then he sat down next to Constance.
He said, "Connie, you have beautiful legs.
" He asked for another cigarette.
He smoked it, drank two more drinks, then put his head down on Connie's legs, against the stockings, in her lap, and he said, "Connie, I guess I'm no good, I guess I'm crazy, I'm sorry I hit you, I'm sorry I burned you with that cigarette.
" Constance sat there.
She ran her fingers through George's hair, stroking him, soothing him.
Soon he was asleep.
She waited a while longer.
Then she lifted his head and placed it on the pillow, lifted his legs and straightened them out on the bed.
She stood up, walked to the fifth, poured a jolt of good whiskey in to her glass, added a touch of water and drank it sown.
She walked to the trailer door, pulled it open, stepped out, closed it.
She walked through the backyard, opened the fence gate, walked up the alley under the one o'clock moon.
The sky was clear of clouds.
The same skyful of clouds was up there.
She got out on the boulevard and walked east and reached the entrance of The Blue Mirror.
She walked in, and there was Walter sitting alone and drunk at the end of the bar.
She walked up and sat down next to him.
"Missed me, baby?" she asked.
Walter looked up.
He recognized her.
He didn't answer.
He looked at the bartender and the bartender walked toward them They all knew eachother.
Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

Dreams

 It is later than late, 
the simmered down darkness 
of the jukebox hour.
The hour of drunkenness and cigarettes.
The fools hour.
In my dreams, I still smoke, cigarette after cigarette.
It's okay, I'm dreaming.
In dreams, smoking can't kill me.
It's warm outside.
I have every window open.
There's no such thing as danger, only the dangerous face of beauty.
I am hanging at my window like a houseplant.
I am smoking a cigarette.
I am having a drink.
The pale, blue moon is shining.
The savage stars appear.
Every fool that passes by smiles up at me.
I drip ashes on them.
There is music playing from somewhere.
A thready, salt-sweet tune I don't know any of the words to.
There's a gentle breeze making hopscotch with my hair.
This is the wet blanket air of midnight.
This is the incremental hour.
This is the plastic placemat of time between reality and make-believe.
This is tabletop dream time.
This is that faint stain on your mattress, the one you'll discover come morning, and wonder how.
This is the monumental moment.
The essential: look at me now.
This is the hour.
Isn't it lovely? Wake up the stars! Isn't it fabulous? Kiss the moon! Where is the clock? The one that always runs ahead.
The one that always tries to crush me with its future.
Originally published in Literati Magazine, Winter 2005.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran 2005


Written by Marilyn Hacker | Create an image from this poem

The Boy

 It is the boy in me who's looking out
the window, while someone across the street
mends a pillowcase, clouds shift, the gutter spout
pours rain, someone else lights a cigarette?

(Because he flinched, because he didn't whirl
around, face them, because he didn't hurl
the challenge back—"Fascists?"—not "Faggots"—Swine!
he briefly wonders—if he were a girl .
.
.
) He writes a line.
He crosses out a line.
I'll never be a man, but there's a boy crossing out words: the rain, the linen-mender, are all the homework he will do today.
The absence and the priviledge of gender confound in him, soprano, clumsy, frail.
Not neuter—neutral human, and unmarked, the younger brother in the fairy tale except, boys shouted "Jew!" across the park at him when he was coming home from school.
The book that he just read, about the war, the partisans, is less a terrible and thrilling story, more a warning, more a code, and he must puzzle out the code.
He has short hair, a red sweatshirt.
They know something about him—that he should be proud of? That's shameful if it shows? That got you killed in 1942.
In his story, do the partisans have sons? Have grandparents? Is he a Jew more than he is a boy, who'll be a man someday? Someone who'll never be a man looks out the window at the rain he thought might stop.
He reads the sentence he began.
He writes down something that he crosses out.
Written by Robert Pinsky | Create an image from this poem

Ode To Meaning

 Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer--

In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:

Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon, Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio, Jasper kinema of legendary Mind, Naked omphalos pierced By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn Vein of will, xenophile Yearning out of Zero.
Untrusting I court you.
Wavering I seek your face, I read That Crusoe's knife Reeked of you, that to defile you The soldier makes the rabbi spit on the torah.
"I'll drown my book" says Shakespeare.
Drowned walker, revenant.
After my mother fell on her head, she became More than ever your sworn enemy.
She spoke Sometimes like a poet or critic of forty years later.
Or she spoke of the world as Thersites spoke of the heroes, "I think they have swallowed one another.
I Would laugh at that miracle.
" You also in the laughter, warrior angel: Your helmet the zodiac, rocket-plumed Your spear the beggar's finger pointing to the mouth Your heel planted on the serpent Formulation Your face a vapor, the wreath of cigarette smoke crowning Bogart as he winces through it.
You not in the words, not even Between the words, but a torsion, A cleavage, a stirring.
You stirring even in the arctic ice, Even at the dark ocean floor, even In the cellular flesh of a stone.
Gas.
Gossamer.
My poker friends Question your presence In a poem by me, passing the magazine One to another.
Not the stone and not the words, you Like a veil over Arthur's headstone, The passage from Proverbs he chose While he was too ill to teach And still well enough to read, I was Beside the master craftsman Delighting him day after day, ever At play in his presence--you A soothing veil of distraction playing over Dying Arthur playing in the hospital, Thumbing the Bible, fuzzy from medication, Ever courting your presence, And you the prognosis, You in the cough.
Gesturer, when is your spur, your cloud? You in the airport rituals of greeting and parting.
Indicter, who is your claimant? Bell at the gate.
Spiderweb iron bridge.
Cloak, video, aroma, rue, what is your Elected silence, where was your seed? What is Imagination But your lost child born to give birth to you? Dire one.
Desired one.
Savior, sentencer-- Absence, Or presence ever at play: Let those scorn you who never Starved in your dearth.
If I Dare to disparage Your harp of shadows I taste Wormwood and motor oil, I pour Ashes on my head.
You are the wound.
You Be the medicine.
Written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti | Create an image from this poem

Number 8

 It was a face which darkness could kill
     in an instant
a face as easily hurt
   by laughter or light

 'We think differently at night'
     she told me once
lying back languidly

   And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
    'whom I am constantly shocking'

 Then she would smile and look away 
 light a cigarette for me
    sigh and rise

and stretch
 her sweet anatomy

   let fall a stocking
Written by Paul Eluard | Create an image from this poem

Five Haiku

 The wind 
Undecided 
Rolls a cigarette of air 

The mute girl talks: 
It is art's imperfection.
This impenetrable speech.
The motor car is truly launched: Four martyrs' heads Roll under the wheels.
Ah! a thousand flames, a fire, The light, a shadow! The sun is following me.
A feather gives to a hat A touch of lightness: The chimney smokes.
Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

Forest Of Europe

 The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.
The inlaid copper laurel of an oak shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath of lines from Mandelstam, which you recite, uncoils as visibly as cigarette smoke.
"The rustling of ruble notes by the lemon Neva.
" Under your exile's tongue, crisp under heel, the gutturals crackle like decaying leaves, the phrase from Mandelstam circles with light in a brown room, in barren Oklahoma.
There is a Gulag Archipelago under this ice, where the salt, mineral spring of the long Trail of Tears runnels these plains as hard and open as a herdsman's face sun-cracked and stubbled with unshaven snow.
Growing in whispers from the Writers' Congress, the snow circles like cossacks round the corpse of a tired Choctaw till it is a blizzard of treaties and white papers as we lose sight of the single human through the cause.
So every spring these branches load their shelves, like libraries with newly published leaves, till waste recycles them—paper to snow— but, at zero of suffering, one mind lasts like this oak with a few brazen leaves.
As the train passed the forest's tortured icons, ths floes clanging like freight yards, then the spires of frozen tears, the stations screeching steam, he drew them in a single winters' breath whose freezing consonants turned into stone.
He saw the poetry in forlorn stations under clouds vast as Asia, through districts that could gulp Oklahoma like a grape, not these tree-shaded prairie halts but space so desolate it mocked destinations.
Who is that dark child on the parapets of Europe, watching the evening river mint its sovereigns stamped with power, not with poets, the Thames and the Neva rustling like banknotes, then, black on gold, the Hudson's silhouettes? >From frozen Neva to the Hudson pours, under the airport domes, the echoing stations, the tributary of emigrants whom exile has made as classless as the common cold, citizens of a language that is now yours, and every February, every "last autumn", you write far from the threshing harvesters folding wheat like a girl plaiting her hair, far from Russia's canals quivering with sunstroke, a man living with English in one room.
The tourist archipelagoes of my South are prisons too, corruptible, and though there is no harder prison than writing verse, what's poetry, if it is worth its salt, but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth? >From hand to mouth, across the centuries, the bread that lasts when systems have decayed, when, in his forest of barbed-wire branches, a prisoner circles, chewing the one phrase whose music will last longer than the leaves, whose condensation is the marble sweat of angels' foreheads, which will never dry till Borealis shuts the peacock lights of its slow fan from L.
A.
to Archangel, and memory needs nothing to repeat.
Frightened and starved, with divine fever Osip Mandelstam shook, and every metaphor shuddered him with ague, each vowel heavier than a boundary stone, "to the rustling of ruble notes by the lemon Neva," but now that fever is a fire whose glow warms our hands, Joseph, as we grunt like primates exchanging gutturals in this wintry cave of a brown cottage, while in drifts outside mastodons force their systems through the snow.

Book: Shattered Sighs