holed up inside the mound of bric-a-brac

to be fired that night, and slept. And the rest

was a case of identification

by watches and lockets, fillings and teeth.

Someone gets the man a drink, and a seat.

And buildings swim in the haze of the heat.

And rockets set out for parks and gardens

and nose-dive into purple streets. And sparks

make the most of some moments of stardom.

And flakes of ash and motes of soot float up,

cool down, fall out, then go to ground. No sign,

no trace, unless they settle on the skin,

unless they come to hand or find a face

to brush or smudge or dust or break against.

And panes of glass take a shine to the fire,

and glass to all sides is amazed with light,

and every surface of a similar type

carries a torch, becomes inflamed. And eyes

if they blink are ablaze on the inside.

Gunpowder battles it out in the sky

where rockets go on unzipping the night.

Two or three at a time each firework blooms,

opens up fruits of sodium yellows

and calcium reds, shades of strontium

and copper—copper green and copper blue.

The tease of a paper fuse, then gunsmoke

shot with potash fumes, and cordite nosing

out of every empty barrel, casing,

tube. And several figures surround each squib,

and each and every huddle of people,

adults and kids, is the cast and crew

of its own short film, fifteen seconds long

at most and flickering—not black and white

but tinted in tones of alloys and chromes.

A soundtrack of sibilants, clacks and clicks,

and thuds and shrieks that are harder to place—

warfare or birdsong, peacocks or bombshells,

air raids, kittiwakes. And familiar sights,

like a Catherine wheel escaping its tail,

a Roman candle that snowballs the moon.

Clear skies, a night with its lid taken off

but peppered and strafed with fractals and flak,

gerbes and Saxons, star shells, Mines of Serpents,

Bengal Lights and other coruscations,

and the fire, glazing every act and scene

with versions of orange and tangerine,

the woods to the east thrown over with pink

and with crimson. There are cats in those woods,

they reckon, wild ones. Cats, and also mink,

but no one alive to swear they’ve seen them.

And a wheel of cheese—the moon on the rise,

caught like a ball in the branches of trees.

And a heat so solid now, a hard glow

we take for granted, easy come and go,

light years away from the era of flint

and stone and steel, the friction of dry sticks, the times

of trees ignited by bolts of lightning,

the untouchable gold of lava flow,

stories of sparks more precious than pearls

thrown up from the hooves of careering colts

or buffalo, struck from the beaks and claws

of eagles and hawks, and the days of flames

kept secret and safe in temples and caves.

Fire borrowed from neighbours and given back,

caught from the burning tail of a wild cat,