There is a fire that never goes out
There is a fire that never goes out. You warm your hands over it for a few years and learn the names of the statues in the academy. One by one the books disappear from the library until it’s just an empty room, the one you work in. The wheels of night begin to spin. The only light is memory. There is a fire that never goes out.
| Shane Clements |
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levelheaded: There is fire that never goes out
This poem’s first and last sentences are word-for-word identical. The ways we read them are not. The first sentence arrives with no context because it is first. It is a way of starting out – a way of staking claim to the page screen. But when we get to the last sentence, the speaker’s been deflated. His earlier declaration is possessed by doubt, putting the absoluteness of the word “never” in question.
As a metaphor, the fire is something to “warm your hands over.” It’s a comfort rather than a necessity. There is nothing plainly useful in learning “the names of statues at the academy.” In these lines, the speaker has a detached, distantly critical opinion of academic education. It’s a bit like throwback Kanye West telling us, “‘Cause when I die, buddy, you know what’s gonna keep me warm? That’s right. Those degrees.” (Though Yeezy has his own degree to keep him warm these days).
But unlike Kanye’s skit, this poem doesn’t commit to its critical stance. Books still fuel the “fire that never goes out,” and the warmth of that fire is worth enough that the poem’s “you” wants to keep it burning. Literally, the books are disappearing from the shelves to fuel a fire, which gives the poem a dark, apocalyptic feel. We can picture the last living human holed up in a public library checking a decades expired can for signs of botulism. But is seems, as we’ve said, the poem’s not to be taken literally. It is a parable. And there’s a special complexity to the idea that the books are consumed once and for all. Is the first stage of enlightenment to an idea the only one with enough power to fuel the “fire?” Can’t a book be placed back on the shelf? This speaker might argue: “Yes, to an extent, a book may be placed back on the shelf, but at some point we have exhausted its use, and we’ll have to throw it into the fire.”
So again, this is not a poem about an apocalypse – unless we’re talking about the deep, dark end of the world that awaits every one of us. It’s a poem about how some of us spend our lives. It’s a poem about death. No wonder the speaker seems unconvinced his fire will “never” go out, especially as “the wheels of the night begin to spin.”
-The Editors
