Fire / Eunice Tietjiens

Fire


Love, let us light A fire tonight, A wood fire on the hearth. With torn and living tongues the flames leap. Hungrily They catch and lift, to beat their sudden wings Toward freedom and the sky. The hot wood sings And crackles in a pungent ecstasy That seems half pain of death, and half a vast Triumphant exultation of release That its slow life-time of lethargic peace Should come to this wild rapture at the last. We watch it idly, and our casual speech Drops slowly into silence. Something stirs and struggles in me, Something out of reach Of surface thoughts, a slow and formless thing — Not I, but a dim memory Born of the dead behind me. In my blood The blind race turns, groping and faltering. Desires Only half glimpsed, not understood, Stir me and shake me. Fires Answer the fire, and vague shapes pass Like shapes of wind across the grass. The red flames catch and lift, Roaring and sucking in a furious blaze; And a strange, swift Hunger for violence is in me. My blood pounds With a dark memory of age-old days, And mad red nights I never knew, When the dead in me lived, and horrid sounds Broke from their furry throats. In drunken rounds, Blood-crazed, they danced before the leaping flames, While something twisted in the fire…. Now as the flames mount higher Strange pictures pass. I cannot see them quite And yet I feel them. I am in a dread Dark temple, and I beat my head In maddened rite, Before the red-hot belly of a god Who eats his worshippers. . . .                           This is a funeral pyre And one lies dead Who was my life. The fat smoke curls and eddies, Beckoning suttee…. But the moment slips To Bacchanalian revels—quick hot lips And leaping limbs, lit by the glare Of human torches. . . A sudden spark Goes crackling upward, followed by a shower; And I am in the hills, cool hills and dark, Primeval as the fire. The beacon flare Leaps in a roaring tower, Spattering in sparks among the stars Tales of wild wars. And on a distant crest Its mate makes answer…. But the embers gleam Like molten metal steaming at a forge, Where with rough jest Great lusty fellows Ply the roaring bellows, And clang the song of labor—and the dream Man builds in metal…. Now the red flame steadies. Softly and quietly it burns, Purring, and its embers wear A friendly and domestic air. This is the hearth-fire—home and peace at last. Comfort and safety are attendant here. The primal fear Is shut away, to whistle in the blast Beyond the doorway where the shadows twine. The fire is safety, and the fire is home, Light, warmth and food. Here careless children come Filling the place with laughter; And after Men make good council-talk, and old men spin, With that great quiet of the wise, Tales of dead beauty, and of dying eyes. The fire is drooping now. A log falls in Softly upon itself, like one grown tired With ecstasy. The lithe tongues sink In ash and ember: And something I remember From ages gone—and yet I cannot think— Some secret of the end, Of earth grown old, and death turned friend, And man who passes Like flame, like light, like wind across the grasses. Ah, what was that? A sudden terror sped Behind me in the shadows. I am cold; And I should like your hand to hold Now that the fire is dead. Love, light the lamp, and come away to bed. Fire is a strange thing, burning in your head.