The Smokers /Fernand Leger
Squat men with cigarettes
Score the village with smoke and ash,
Its rooftops obscured
by billows of white clouds
in a slow-motion turbulence
of their exhaled breath.
It is difficult to tell the factories
from the smokers. As the burning shapes
haunt the cravats
of the men who inhale
the fumes of their slow self-immolation.
And in the ennui of their own regret
rise as if to the vault of a ceiling,
that was built to imply
a ratiocination,
that is and was
as inevitable as death.
