Sunday, October 30, 2011

Non-smoker’s plea

Although I am an unrepentant smoker, I am entirely in sympathy with this plaintive plea.

There is one of those animated versions by Jim Clark available on You Tube for this not-very-well-known poem. I think he must have the same poetry books as I have,

Plaintive plea of a non-smoker

I’m not a smoker but I do not hate
My fellowmen who seem to feel a need,
Quite irresistible, to cultivate
The weed.

I’m tolerance itself. I would not bate
The smoker’s freedom by one jot or tittle,
But could he not reciprocate
A little?

What quirk of mind is it that makes him able
(And for the moment I’m no longer joking)
To smoke in perfect peace beneath a label,
‘No Smoking’?

Is it unreasonable to deplore
Effrontery that nothing will abash
And that allows him to bestrew the floor
With ash?

Forgive me if I seem a heretic.
I might have paid my homage to a queen
But not the satyr that he served – Old Nick
-otine