> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Revolutions in light - URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/2209/ - Published: 2004-11-05T00:11:00.000Z - Updated: 2019-02-14T22:50:03.000Z - Author: Open democracy - Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17 **Shark Infested Water (Firework Night)** **Pele Cox** The box said ‘Lake of Sapphires’ but this could be an ocean of light. ‘Do not be deceived by the serene packaging on the Roman Candle,’ he said (as if it was me who walked from Spielberg’s first screening in horror.) I wait for seven when, white as an expanse of jaws we tilt our faces up to tapers rushing with light I am hurting the night. With this air, everything is an ocean sudden with fingers I cannot reach. I tip a dark eye back to the deep grass think, what will be left of our display as the light digits drift through into day. A Fireworks Display at Tyogoku Bridge, Utagawa Toyoharu Pele Cox was born in London in 1971\. She studied art history at Nottingham University and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, then spent three years as managing director of Spine Books. She is currently writing poetry in Kent, England. **The Bonfire** **Robert Frost** “OH, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves, As reckless as the best of them to-night, By setting fire to all the brush we piled With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow. Oh, let’s not wait for rain to make it safe. The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough Down dark converging paths between the pines. Let’s not care what we do with it to-night. Divide it? No! But burn it as one pile The way we piled it. And let’s be the talk Of people brought to windows by a light Thrown from somewhere against their wall-paper. Rouse them all, both the free and not so free With saying what they’d like to do to us For what they’d better wait till we have done. Let’s all but bring to life this old volcano, If that is what the mountain ever was — And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will...” “And scare you too?” the children said together. “Why wouldn’t it scare me to have a fire Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know That still, if I repent, I may recall it, But in a moment not: a little spurt Of burning fatness, and then nothing but The fire itself can put it out, and that By burning out, and before it burns out It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars, And sweeping round it with a flaming sword, Made the dim trees stand back in wider circle — Done so much and I know not how much more I mean it shall not do if I can bind it. Well if it doesn’t with its draft bring on A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter, As once it did with me upon an April. The breezes were so spent with winter blowing They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them Short of the perch their languid flight was toward; And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven As I walked once round it in possession. But the wind out of doors — you know the saying. There came a gust. You used to think the trees Made wind by fanning since you never knew It blow but that you saw the trees in motion. Something or someone watching made that gust. It put the flame tip-down and dabbed the grass Of over-winter with the least tip-touch Your tongue gives salt or sugar in your hand. The place it reached to blackened instantly. The black was all there was by day-light, That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke — And a flame slender as the hepaticas, Blood-root, and violets so soon to be now. But the black spread like black death on the ground, And I think the sky darkened with a cloud Like winter and evening coming on together. There were enough things to be thought of then. Where the field stretches toward the north And setting sun to Hyla brook, I gave it To flames without twice thinking, where it verges Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear They might find fuel there, in withered brake, Grass its full length, old silver golden-rod, And alder and grape vine entanglement, To leap the dusty deadline. For my own I took what front there was beside. I knelt And thrust hands in and held my face away. Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating. A board is the best weapon if you have it. I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew, And said out loud, I couldn’t bide the smother And heat so close in; but the thought of all The woods and town on fire by me, and all The town turned out to fight for me — that held me. I trusted the brook barrier, but feared The road would fail; and on that side the fire Died not without a noise of crackling wood — Of something more than tinder-grass and weed — That brought me to my feet to hold it back By leaning back myself, as if the reins Were round my neck and I was at the plough. I won! But I’m sure no one ever spread Another color over a tenth the space That I spread coal-black over in the time It took me. Neighbors coming home from town Couldn’t believe that so much black had come there While they had backs turned, that it hadn’t been there When they had passed an hour or so before Going the other way and they not seen it. They looked about for someone to have done it. But there was no one. I was somewhere wondering Where all my weariness had gone and why I walked so light on air in heavy shoes In spite of a scorched Fourth-of-July feeling. Why wouldn’t I be scared remembering that?” “If it scares you, what will it do to us?” “Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared, What would you say to war if it should come? That’s what for reasons I should like to know — If you can comfort me by any answer.” “Oh, but war’s not for children — it’s for men.” “Now we are digging almost down to China. My dears, my dears, you thought that — we all thought it. So your mistake was ours. Haven’t you heard, though, About the ships where war has found them out At sea, about the towns where war has come Through opening clouds at night with droning speed Further o’erhead than all but stars and angels, — And children in the ships and in the towns? Haven’t you heard what we have lived to learn? Nothing so new — something we had forgotten: War is for everyone, for children too. I wasn’t going to tell you and I mustn’t. The best way is to come up hill with me And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.” From *Mountain Interval*, 1916 Bonfire, Snow, ca. 1919, John Sloan Robert Frost (1874-1963) is one of America’s most celebrated poets. **Diwali** **Vikram Seth** Three years of neurotic Guy Fawkes Days-I recall That lonely hankering – But I am home after all. Home. These walls, this sky Splintered with wakes of light These mud-lamps beaded round The eaves, this festive night, These streets, these voices...yet The old insensate dread, Abeyant as that love, Once more shifts in my head. Five? Six? generations ago Somewhere in the Punjab My father’s family, farmers, Perhaps had a small shop And two generations later Could send a son to a school To gain the conqueror’s Authoritarian seal: English! Six-armed god, Key to a job, to power, Snobbery, the good life, This separateness, this fear. English: beloved language of Jonson, Wordsworth’s tongue – These my “meridian names” Whose grooves I crawl along. The Mughuls fought and ruled And settled. Even while They hungered for musk-melon, Rose, peach, nightingale, The land assumed their love. At sixty they could not Retire westwards. The British Made us the Orient. How could an Englishman say About the divan-e-khas “If there is heaven on earth It is this; it is this; it is this.”? Macaulay the prophet of learning Chewed at his pen: one taste Of Western wisdom “surpasses All the books of the East,” And Kalidas, Shankaracharya, Panini, Bhaskar, Kabir, Surdas sank, and we welcomed The reign of Shakespeare. The undigested Hobbes, The Mill who later ground (Through talk of liberty) The Raj out of the land ... O happy breed of Babus, I march on with your purpose; We will have railways, common law And a good postal service – And I twist along Those grooves from image to image, Violet, elm-tree, swan, Pork-pie, gable, scrimmage And as we title our memoirs “Roses in December” Though we all know that here Roses grow in December And we import songs Composed in the U.S For Vietnam (not even Our local horrors grip us) And as, over gin at the Club, I note that egregious member Strut just perceptibly more When with a foreigner, I know that the whole world Means exile of our breed Who are not home at home And are abroad abroad, Huddled in towns, while around: “He died last week. My boys Are starving. Daily we dig The ground for sweet potatoes.” “The landlord’s hirelings broke My husband’s ribs-and I Grow blind in the smoke of the hearth.” “Who will take care of me When I am old? No-one Is left.” So it goes on, The cyclic shadow-play Under the sinister sun; That sun that, were there water, Could bless the dispirited land, Coaxing three crops a year From this same yieldless ground. Yet would these parched wraiths still Starve in their ruins, while “Silkworms around them grow Into fat cocoons?”, Sad soil, This may as well be my home. Because no other nation Moves me thus? What of that? Cause for congratulation? This could well be my home; I am too used to the flavor Of tenous fixity; I have been brought to savour Its phases: the winter wheat – The flowers of Har-ki-Doon – The sal forests - the hills Inflamed with rhododendron – The first smell of the Rains On the baked earth-the peaks Snow-drowned in permanence – The single mountain lakes. What if my tongue is warped? I need no words to gaze At Ajanta, those flaked caves, Or at the tomb of Mumtaz; And when an alap of Marwa Swims on slow flute-notes over The neighbours’ roofs at sunset Wordlessly like a lover It holds me-till the strain Of exile, here or there, Subverts the trance, the fear Of fear found everywhere. “But freedom?” the notes would sing... Parole is enough. Tonight Below the fire-crossed sky Of the Festival of Light. Give your soul leave to feel What distilled peace it can; In lieu of joy, at least This lapsing anodyne. “The world is a bridge. Pass over it, Building no house upon it.” Acceptance may come with time; Rest, then disquieted heart. Two court musicians performing for diwali, Rajput style, c.1700s Vikram Seth, accalimed novelist, poet and author of many non-fiction books, was born in Calcutta in 1952\. A Suitable Boy won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1994.