POETRY BURNS Poem by Dane Zajc

Fire reads poems.
Fire assigns punctuation.
Fast fire with charred eyes
flips pages with flaming fingers.

Who will read verses,
etched in embers.
Burned out words. Decomposed syllables.
Distorted letters.

An impaled head
writes verses under closed eyelids.
Sings us a black poem
inaudibly from the slit throat.

Fair-haired poems burn with fire in their hair.
Nightingales burn above the nightingale city
with singed wings, with the burned out
warble in their beaks.
Roses burn in the walled gardens.
Brothels burn, the minaret rods break.
Churches burn.
In the fire a charred question,
what is a poem.

The faces of clocks burn,
set ablaze all at once.
The time past, the future time
dart from the flames of the present time.

On the question what is death,
blood drips
from the fatal wound of the just born