Old Men, Smoking
Sandra Kasturi
Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse 2008 (view all the winners)
Most Highly Commended
You can see them standing singly or in clusters on street corners
Or sitting, calm as toads, in quaint but seedy coffee bars,
These old men who smoke and don't speak English.
They stare into the distance, seeing the drowning
Of the Titanic, the Lusitania, some obscure Estonian ferry,
Experiencing the wash of history. It leaves them clean,
Weathered, their eyes turned that strangest of blues by the sea,
The wind, the turning of years. These old men who smoke
And don't speak Englishóthey know all the secrets of the universe,
Revealed to them in each glowing ember that flies away
From their mouths into the world. These old menódescendants
Of Prometheus, who, having stolen fire, passed it down through the ages
To old men who never grow older or die. They are immune
To cancer, to weather, to the voices of women. They simply smoke,
Cast embers into air, into history, mutter in foreign tongues
No matter what country they are in. These men with their gnarled
Gardeners' hands never really smile, never really see you,
But you know them, know them from past incarnations,
From memory, from myth. Maybe they do smile, inwardly, secretly,
At our mad scurryings and busy bodies. Such guileless crocodiles!ó
Sitting, steadying the tilting world; smoking, obscuring the truths
We cannot bear to know; humming in the voices of God.
