No Need to Lament
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Since fire is always chaste, we do not need
To know its secret. Smoke is not its soul.
Its soul is more a blue and yellow steed
That rages like a spirit-opened scroll,
That pulls Elijah’s swooping past the sky
To heaven where he does not know that Christ
Enthroned is smouldering, his sceptre on his thigh
And pointing ever upward. There this tryst
Of prophet with Almighty God makes flames
Elisha cannot see. Like us below
He does not know ten thousand angel names,
Is clueless to the meaning of their glow.
No. That is not quite true. He smells the hint
Of innocence and dreams, their holy tint.
~ Phillip Whidden