Crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold, Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire. (A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.)
The speaker sits alone in cumbering shadows, holding a cigar. He watches its crimson tip smolder, then notices the gray ash that stiffens and covers the fire. That small image becomes a quiet way of thinking about death: the ember glows like life, and the ash is what remains when the flame is gone.
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