Old Men, Smoking

Came across the poem "Old Men, Smoking" while googling for Sandra Kasturi and had to say something about it. I found it on the ARC Poetry website in a 2005 review by John Barton . The poem describes the interior world view of the men through exterior details - tells a story in images. I love the way Kasturi makes lovely language reveal hard realities and then lets it stand, naked, in this poem: admiring the "guileless crocodiles" who steady the "tilting world" even while exposing their ugliness, like an object and a disease "humming in the voices of God". Just wow.