| Meanwhile the fire fountain is still smouldering and welling | |
| Casting off a hellish stink and wild fumes of pitch | |
| Acrid as jealousy. And it might be | |
| That flame writing might be visible right there, in the gaps in the smoke | |
| Without going through the bother of the solution-writing. | |
| A word here and there--"promised" or "beware"--you have to go the long way round | |
| Before you find the entrance to that side is closed. | |
| The phosphorescent liquid is still heaving and boiling, however. | |
| And what if this insane activity were itself a kind of drawing | |
| Of April sidewalks, and young trees bursting into timid leaf | |
| And dogs sniffing hydrants, the fury of spring beginning to back up along their veins? | |
| Yonder stand a young boy and a girl leaning against a bicycle. | |
| The iron lamppost next to them disappears into the feathery, unborn leaves that suffocate its top. | |
| his |  |
| A postman is coming up the walk, a letter held in its outstretched hand. | |
| This is his first day on the new job, and he looks warily around | |
| Alas not seeing the hideous bulldog bearing down on him like sixty, its hellish eyes fixed on the seat of his pants, jowls a-slaver. | |
| Nearby a young woman is fixing her stocking. Watching her, a chap with a hat | |
| Is about to walk into the path of a speeding hackney cabriolet. The line of lampposts | |
| Marches up the street in strict array, but the lamp-parts | |
| Are lost in feathery bloom, in which hidden faces can be spotted, for this is a puzzle scene. | |
| The sky is white, yet full of outlined stars--it must be night, | |
| Or an early springtime evening, with just a hint of dampness and chill in the air-- | |
| Memory of winter, hint of the autumn to come-- | |
| Yet the lovers congregate anyway, the lights twinkle slowly on. | |
| Cars move steadily along the street. | |
| It is a scene worthy of the poet's pen, yet it is the fire-demon | |
| Who has created it, throwing it up on the dubious surface of a phosphorescent fountain | |
| For all the world like a poet. But love can appreciate it, | |
| Use or mis-use it for its own ends. Love is stronger than fire. | |
| The proof of this is that already the heaving, sucking fountain is paling away | |
| Yet the fire-lines of the lovers remain fixed, as if permanently, on the air of the lab. | |
| Not for long though. And now they too collapse, | |
| Giving, as they pass away, the impression of a bluff, | |
| Its craggy headlands outlined in sparks, its top crowned with a zigzag | |
| Of grass and shrubs, pebbled beach at the bottom, with flat sea | |
| Holding a few horizontal lines. Then this vision, too, passesXXXXXX fades slowly away. | |
