Christmas was a humbug,
to begin with.
Marley was dead.
The men who watched the light
had built a fire by
the rough table where they sat,
always in earnest.
In came a fiddler
making a great stir.
She was exceedingly pretty
when she laughed.
Every man among them
had a Christmas thought.
It seemed to shine.
He listened for an hour,
his poor, forgotten self
Forgotten.
It had been a very old song
Not an echo, not a sigh.
In possession of the world–
The world, so irresistibly contagious.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 