Fire Baptizes our Awakening!²
What Bright Christenings you
Bring into Swirling Conflagrations³
Animals Arrive, Interlaced, and Gods
Interlaced – and Humans Flame-Woven⁴
O Delicate Walker – Babbler, Dialectician Fire⁵
Regenerating Fire such as hath turned the Dense
Black Element into a Crystal Pathway for the Sun⁶
Being a Poet means letting yourself Catch Fire⁷
Dress our Souls in Eternal Garments of Flame⁸
Fire Poets Burn at Absolute Zero⁹
Hectic and Flexible – Flames
Are Ideal new Bodies for us¹⁰
¹ Isabelle Baafi, Bruckins Braggadocio
² Mai Sayigh tr. L. Jayyusi & Nye, From Beirut Under Siege
³ Sandra Simmonds, Let’s Make the Water Turn Black
⁴ Muriel Rukeyser, Ajanta
⁵ Louis MacNeice, Brother Fire
⁶ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁷ Kara Jackson, Teenagers Are Not Exempt from Poetry
⁸ Jidi Majia tr. Denis Mair, A Nuosu Speaks of Fire
⁹ Gary Snyder, As for Poets
¹⁰ Rae Armantrout, Transactions