by DAVID PLANTE.

SING FOR LOVE – AFTER JACOPONE DA TODI

Jubilation rises in flames,
And, standing by such fire, the man sings,
Can’t speak, can’t know what words
Would come if he could speak,
Though he longs, longs for words
To come to him to speak. He sings,
Sings, in wordless jubilation.
Jubilation roars in flames
And his singing roars,
One with flaming love.
His voice rings out beyond his self
As ringing rings beyond a bell,
As doves fly from a ringing bell.
He is in flames, alone, but one with fire.
They laugh, those standing by him:
A crazed man in flames, singing,
He a shadow in the spirit of the fire.
Burning, he knows that to be one with love
He must with love bear the suffering of fire.
His sings with ringing delight,
His singing a great, alarming bell,
He burning.

FIRE AS PHILOSOPHY

Sight is caused by fire in the eye,

And so sight sees chairs, tables, beds as flames,
Flames round the supper table,
Flames sleeping in the bed,
And in the street flames walking,

And above the flaming chairs and tables, above
The flaming supper, the flames sleeping in
The flaming bed, above the flaming walkers in the street,

High, high above, one eye burning.

FIRE

Let go, let go, I shouted,
Let go the burning post,
But you held on, your fingers burning
On the post, I pulling at you
To let go, let go, but you held on,
And all your body blazed.

I stood back and, back,
Watched you within the flames,
Your charred arms and hands
Still holding to the charred post.

And when the post fell into ash
So did you, one with ash,
From which thin smoke rose,
And then the wind blew
And with the wind the ashes
In a whirl blew round me,
Howling for you
Who held that burning post.

The long rope binds my wrists,
Too long for me to see who at the end
Pulls me through the streets, to where
In the distance smoke rises from a fire.
And at the fire, I close my eyes,
My hands held out for the rope
To be untied; and, eyes open,
I see you, who pulls me to the flames.

CHI PER FOCO PASSA

You my love no longer,
I no longer yours,
No longer you nor I but burning fire.
And what we were and what we are
Is for fire to know, for fire knows
All there is to know
In the history of fire,
Fire flaming in air with no source but fire.

O, I love, I love, I do love,
And whom do I love but you,
You as fire that survives your history,
Survives you, and holds me as you were held
To that burning post, and in you
I, burning, let everything go.

Gather up the bones, the ash
From where the pyre burned
In a stony field, gather up
Into an urn, and place
The urn within a niche
In the shadow of a pine,
There near a spring of water
Flowing clear from stone.

FIRE AS SYMBOL

To join a hovering excellence, to escape
From fire and be part only of that which
Fire is the symbol: the celestial possible.

Wallace Stevens
— To an Old Philosopher in Rome

Jacopone knew what fire is the symbol of,
And burned within that fire,
Though knew there could be no symbol
Without the fire, so start with fire

Burning a tree, burning a house,
Burning a man tied to a post,
And try to make fire escape from fire
To become the celestial possible.

Hear the tied up man scream,
So hidden in the flames
The flames scream
Until the flames are silent.

See fire raging in charred ruins left
By the conquering army,
See the flaming broken windows
Of the desecrated hospital.

Try to abstract fire from fire
To make a heart on fire
That burns without burning out,
That floats above the heart, in air,

And believe in fire burning within fire.
Try.

BELIEF IN FIRE

Your life was not fulfilled in death,
For where your life ended death
Closed the door. I stand
Before that door, forehead pressed
Against the stone, knowing
That within no transformation
Makes you all I long for you to be.
You’re dead, and that’s all.

Open the door, open the door wide.

I know my grief is too stark for belief,
And derides all belief
In transformation, in you fulfilled dead.

But let go, let go of everything
And open doors, doors and doors.

The longing of meaning is greater than
Meaning assigned by any man, or any God,
And no more meaningful than fire.

Still, some sense beyond grief makes
Fire more than fire, a sense I can’t resolve
With fire, as I can’t resolve you dead
With the sense that you, dead, must be fulfilled—
My longing.

I follow you through doorway
After open doorway,
Opening doors as you go through,
Follow your shadow through
The shadow of a doorway
Into the shadow of a room,
And there the burning fire—

My love! my love!

Believe in what sustains no belief:
Believe in fire.

DEVOTION TO FIRE

Fire is as sacred as our needs are sacred—
For if the need to stay alive is sacred,
Then fire, fulfilling such a need, is sacred—

The mother praying
To save her dying son,
The image of the heart in flames,
A votive offering embossed in tin
Pinned to her bodice as she prays–

The logic holds, if the need to live is
The essential proposition. If,
As living doesn’t hold against dying,
And this she knows as true as she knows
That the heart in flames won’t save her dying son.

Still, the image of the burning heart–
The image of fire as divine,
And as divine eternal
And eternally burning,
The human heart in flames–

For fire is more than fire in the idea of fire,
And life more than life in the idea of life,
And death more than death in the idea of death,
Ideas relied upon to belie the fact that fire
Reduces the body to bones and ash,
And life and death as meaningless as the ruin
Of a city left no stone upon a stone–
And all within the idea: that love is fire.

But she closes her dead son’s eyes,
The mother does, and lets the fire die.

THE MEANING OF ZERO

It seemed to him the circle of the sun
Turned black, though he knew the black
Was smoke rising from the forest in flames,
The forest burning where an airplane
Was shot down, the pilot burning too,
For the world was at war.

And what he had lost, and what
He would lose, all in a great conflagration
That would burn all, the smoke
Forever blackening the sun,
Made zero of all he had known,
And all he would ever know.

He closed the windows of the balcony
And turned into the room to read,
Then dropped the book and closed his eyes.

The need to understand
Is great, and will assert that need,
Will try to understand—
Try and try and try to comprehend
The incomprehensible zero of belief,
The round black zero of belief
Blazing fiery light around the edge.

THE HISTORY OF FIRE

According to Heraclitus, thought is fire,
Refined fire in the enlightening mind,
And as thought is fire fire is thought,
The fiery upper air around the globe
Enlightening men and women harvesting olives
From old trees on rocky terraces.

Fire desires and fulfils desire
Burning up trees, houses, temples, towns,
Desire always greater than fulfilment,

So the globe will burn up, and the mind will burn up,
And the final fire will be pure, fire burning
Within fire, for fire is eternal, fire is the soul.

THE MEANING OF THE BELL

The bell displayed in the town square,
To commemorate the deaths
Of citizens shot against the town’s walls,
Is raised steeple-high above the roofs
And rung, and, ringing, stills all belief
For what is beyond belief, lets go
Of all belief, releasing pigeons
To fly out into the sunlit air.

Believe in what can’t be, but once was,
When Jacopone rang the bell of his devotions
And people stopped and, head bowed, prayed?
When I hear the bell, high in the old stone tower,
Ring, I hear Jacopone’s bell ring, beyond belief—
Beyond all belief but belief in a bell ringing
High in the old stone tower.

The bell rings in the stone tower,
Hour after hour, day and night,
After days and nights, soundlessly,
Then, suddenly, at the sight of a little boy
Passing you in the narrow street, you hear
The bell ring; you hear the bell ring,
Suddenly, when you see
A woman looking from a window,
The shutters drawn back, a hand to her chin;
When you see old men playing
Dominos at a table in the shade of a tree;
You hear the bell ring, the ringing
Resounding far, far beyond belief,
Out, out to the circle of the deaf dead
Commemorated by the ringing bell.

♦

SEE the introduction to these poems by Anthony Howell, here.