One Cigarette -- Edwin Morgan

Guest poem sent in by Deepak Srinivasan

(Poem #1591) One Cigarette No smoke without you, my fire. After you left, your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal of so much love. One cigarette in the non-smoker's tray. As the last spire trembles up, a sudden draught blows it winding into my face. Is it smell, is it taste? You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips. Out with the light. Let the smoke lie back in the dark. Till I hear the very ash sigh down among the flowers of brass I'll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss. -- Edwin Morgan

After reading your selection of Edwin Morgan's poetry (yet again) I continue to
be amazed by the simplicity of the work and yet the intense sense of feelings
that his poems seem to generate. This poem (I respectfully submit) stands among
them for its fineness in depiction of a different kind of nonsmoke without a
fire (in Faulkner speak).  It is good. Very good. From the first to the last.

Deepak