Bonfire Night

What new-made comets climb the murky skies

And each in lurid light their transient rune,

Ephemeral as a whim that skims the mind

When summer zephyrs play !  What banners rise

Fork-tongued in flame, creating ghastly noon

Between the twin conceptions of mankind !

Upon the blazing pyres whole centuries

Of hoarded worthlessness, dead as the moon,

Burn in a glare that makes men worse than blind,

Fickle as Puck in all his vagaries.

Incense in pungent wreaths proclaim the hour

And howling prophets howl their pagan creed,

Calling on nameless Baals in their greed,

Drugged by the tantalus of sensuous power.

 

Weekly Times     2.11.62