Classic Poem

A little comfort...A little...
To fill a pipe... To blow
something away, is that it? —
a wrack, a shadow, and imagine
some atoms of our heaviness gone
with it into thin air? No,

it's more inward than that; The taste,
the very taste of reprieve, of
speculative repose. Bombardment Over .
Passion Spent . If I don't
smoke, I'll go crazy. . . .

" Infantile, "

Freud says (that old Aetna
of cigar-smoke), " Post-natal,
a desire to be nursed " .

(But I'm thoroughly weaned, I think;
don't drink my beer through a straw.)

" It'll kill you, " cry others. Well,
let it. We don't need doctors,
actuaries — it's quite enough
to dote on a thing, obsessed,
yet watch it alter and go
as though our very days were broken
into a bowl and burned —
to be sure living at all is
ultimately fatal.