The smells that come to me,
Diesel engines, cigarette smoke
And rain on old asphalt;
The scents of this evening,
One night of many
To have touched the sky.
The sullen little truck wanders down the street,
Past my home and out of my life,
Heading down a side alley.
Blue exhaust coughs up from a tailpipe
Lingers on the night like industrial fog.
Exhaust: the only proof that it,
Like me, lived an honest existence;
Proof only that it, like me,
Will be remembered by what it left behind,
Though that will fade with time.
On the desk lives the ashtray,
Upon its face the ashes and butts of cigarettes past.
A box of grey smoke lingers above,
Staining the walls of the room with
The scent of burnt tobacco.
When I leave, they will claim my house,
Clean the yellow from the walls;
Soon, there will be no trace of
A cigarette’s existence here;
Soon, like the cigarette before me,
I will have never been in this place I call home.
These things will fade with time.
The rain comes tumbling from the sky,
A freefall of faith and melee.
Their assault, weak as it will be today,
Drowns our endurance tomorrow.
The rain, unlike me, or the truck,
Or the cigarettes I smoke,
Will not fade with time;
It is the nature of things.
And though I may question it,
Its weight and moral standing,
The answer is lost in translation.