stanza 6

• “how he’d had a wish”

  • Paraphrased feel to it: shows her contempt for his decision making.
• “Look, we all have wishes; granted”

  • Everyone has hopes, dreams. That is natural. But not many people actually manage to achieve the things they dream of.
• “But who has wishes granted?”

  • The speaker’s biting humour and sharp wit is continued through the pun ‘granted’ - the first instance on acknowledging that we all wish for things; the second, that he has been literally granted his shallow wish.
• • "Him."
  • Minor sentence to show how bitter she is about it. Also conveys his isolation and highlights his hubris (overwhelming pride and presumption that he ‘deserves’ this ‘gift’).
• • "Do you know about gold? It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes no thirst."
  • Gold is beautiful, but it is essentially useless; it cannot provide the basic necessities for life. The rhetorical question suggests she is annoyed by his foolish choices - they gain nothing from this “gift”. Gold is personified to make the key point relating directly to the Midas myth: greed leads to destruction, not gain. 
• • "as the blue flame played on its luteous stem. At least, I said, you’ll be able to give up smoking for good."
  • Luteous-  yellow tinged with green or brown. Word derived from the Latin name of a plant used to dye things yellow: his cigarette has turned to gold. Her criticism of gold ends abruptly with her contrasting joke about his being able to quit smoking permanently.