What I Say Now

Impress me, if you will, with balls of flame
Spread from your fingers like long grains of salt
Or undercooked damp lumps of barley malt,
Falling like stars, but tenderly, and tame
As kittens, loose-limbed, lovely, lost, and lame,
And when you bring the light show to a halt
Without destruction, gentle to a fault,
I say let there be neither tears nor blame.

There will be devastation, I know that,
But only spiritual, not raging fires
Rising from joists like kindling, up church spires
And on to heaven, catching up your hat
On currents of hot air, as if a chat
Were the deep form to which all art aspires.