Chorus: Did you perhaps transgress beyond this offense?
Prometheus: Yes, I saved mortals from foresight of their doom.
Chorus: What cure did you administer for this affliction?
Prometheus: I put blind hope into their hearts.
Chorus: You bestowed a great benefit on mankind.
Prometheus: I also gave them fire.
Chorus: What! Ephemeral creatures posses the flames?
Prometheus: Yes, and from it they shall learn a thousand arts.
~Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
that the body of light come forth
from the body of fire
And that your eyes come to the surface
from the deep wherein they were sunken
~Ezra Pound, “Canto XCI”
A coffee can, a match
Marinated lamb skewered and burnt
Charcoal seared ground up cow
Where hecatombs in offering to the Gods
Are slaughtered, and of these did I partake.
Bolsheviks, chains, the family led into slavery
A furnace flares in the dark house
Rockets explode in the sky at dusk
High noon, the Cuban missile crisis, dad in the silos:
But we’re non-essential personnel
Whoever draws first loses
Whoever draws last loses
Oil refinery flare stacks and lights
From the New Jersey Turnpike at midnight
From the Pennsylvania Turnpike a few hours later.
"Made in Japan" a joke, Japan lacking
Sequoia remnant in the Sierra Madre Mountains,
Warm campfire vacation nights funded by the arms race.
Children! Hide under your desks!!
A segregated school, a history book (so-called):
who held their trials in the forest. Sometimes
the criminal was forced to leave the state.
Robert Creel, Alabama Ku Klux Klan, 1964:
We represent the majority of the people in Alabama
who hate niggerism, Catholicism, Judaisim,
and all the -isms of the whole world,”
Except, in fact, Protestantism and racism.
And they murdered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Neither the first nor the last, so many…
Walter Cronkite, American deaths
Listed above his shoulder,
Napalm-B laid down in a line of bright flame
Across the homes of children and babies.
Hòa Thuong Thích Quàng Dùc soaked
In flaming gasoline, calm, chanting the mantra
Of Amitabha Buddha to shame the puppet Diêm:
And I remember how you vilified him.
More power manifest in him than in B-52s
Or 1.5 million lbf Saturn V rockets.
Look! That one made it!
Up, and up, and up, and up
Until it took John Glenn into orbit.
Section by section, mile by mile,
Country highways are widened.
We watched them smooth out
And congeal into uniform Interstate
As we got lost in the detours by moonlight.
In Selma Dr. King led the way out,
Away from stupidity and hatred.
He faced down burning crosses and nooses
With iron and steel peace.
And I remember how you vilified him.
Look!
They’re walking on the moon!
Song of Degrees Kelvin
The sun is our median of fire.
Our own bodies burn
In the scale of degrees.
A baby supernova nutrino
Core temp is a hundred billion
Degrees Kelvin
Our beloved sun only a few thousand —
Little more than a rocket or molten steel
And less than a hydrogen bomb.
Could you feel that Napalm-B
burns hotter than Vesuvius lava,
A stoked wood fire than gasoline?
The fire bringer brings hope.
The fire that he brings brings death.
Our manufactured world is built in fire.
The earth emerges from fire,
Even air, even water are born of fire.
Only space gives rise to fire
Rather than fire giving rise to it.
Sparks rise from a burning log
In a redwood campground.
Hopes rise into the arms
Of trees who welcome fire
As a friend.
No war without hope.
No war without fire
No hope without fear
No fear without hope.
A zero-sum game:
What is gained
Equals what is lost.
Modes of the same pitches,
Hope, fear, fire, longing
And reaching for the sky.
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