The Book Burners

i think i might do a couple poems like this...

The Book Burners all stood like

Penguins before a great march—

Only,

They wore different kinds of suits:

Different sinister kinds of suits,

With guns instead of coattails.

 

And as she watched,

She tried not to shed the tear that would

            Give her away—

            Give it all—

            That unseen Whatever she had left—

            Away.

As she watched,

She was saturated with the smoke that

Salted the air with the scent of

            Toasted Tolstoy

            Scorched Shakespeare

            Burnt Barrie and Sir Francis Bacon

            Charbroiled Chaucer and Cervantes and Chopin

And pages of Dickens and Dickinson popping—like the sound of popcorn—in blue tongues of flame on cruel, snarling logs.

 

And as she watched and tried to cower in the shadows that were not there,

And as she shuddered and hoped that her shiver would seem caused only by the cold,

And as she felt the tears running down her ash-burned face and

            Blamed them on the smoke if anyone asked,

And as she deafened herself to the cheering of the people—

            The cheering of the people as though this were a parade,

And as she filled her lungs with the

            Cast-aside words the world had once worshipped,

The Book Burners stood

Still

And silent

And utterly

Unmoved.

Reviews

[Legion]

Such devastation of the words of wisdom raining smoke into the sky. This was magnificiently horrific as a writer. Well done and you should do so much more in this vein. Great piece.

[Dressed in Poetry]

You should do a few poems like this, because it's amazing. I love the "blue tongues of flame on cruel, snarling logs" line. It's great.