The Fire

The train grunted to a stop

Under the dark evening moon

When the heart of the forest echoed

With a strange and diery tune.

The dewy scent of the winter air

Was heavy with ash and tar;

The generous black of the night

Was moth-bitten by a fire.

A thousand trees all burnt at once,

A million birds chirped away,

Holy monkeys danced in the raging

Inferno that swept all the way.

Hours and hours passed by

As embers and angels danced,

Horror-struck gods gaped with awe

When the smoke-demons they glanced.

Here and there they walked around,

Till all the colours were dampened —

They rose high and high in the nightly sky

Till the gods themselves did feel threatened.

The passengers shut their eyes 

And to the mighty spirits they prayed — 

Peacocks and mice, lions and bulls,

No nymph and angel was betrayed.

The demons, undefeated and unrelenting,

Then conjured a brawling fallacy —

A huge ball of bright white flames

Burning on human malady.

Time itself stopped to revolve,

Stuck to this Goliath mire -

The forest devils - too - they came

And danced around this fire.

They had the Rhino's horns

And the Dodo's flightless wings;

On their back adorned a tortoise shell

And some long lost snake's stings!

The spirits sang and sallied around,

Their hands swung and swirled —

And their eyes poured in gallons

The saddest tears of this world.

The nightly sky was lit with flame

In the colour of ghastly rage;

The shadows of the woods they danced

In the war that man had waged.

The train grunted from its halt,

Silent, under the dark evening moon;

Passengers grimaced, awed and hid

Their eyes in an endless swoon.