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An anti-ode entitled ‘Fire’ opening with a line from Anton Chekhov

 


An anti-ode entitled ‘Fire’ opens with a line from a letter of Anton Chekhov written to Dmitri Grigorovich, March 28, 1886, Moscow, and published in the Picador edition of selected letters in 1984. The whole poem is about Chekhov, reading him in Melbourne during the January bushfires. 

FIRE 

“I have composed my stories as reporters write

their accounts of fires – mechanically, half-consciously,

 

“with no concern either for the reader or myself,”

fire being the given, the sudden cause of all decisions

 

the story tells as people run one way snatching belongings

or would stay put and fight heat they cannot beat.

 

Leave now, it is too late to leave, abandon your plans

is the language of fire coming over the hill towards us.

 

Staying doesn’t make you a hero. Fire came from nowhere.

We’ve lost everything. The whole place has just gone.

 

Fire quietens the township’s dreams of a world trip.

Fire has leapt the road and closed all access.

 

Summer in the city, a fine time to read Chekhov,

Anton Chekhov short stories over hardly before begun.

 

The provincial in few pages hides how he’s lost everything.

Loss is official once it’s named by a celebrity.

 

The look on the face of the spokesperson hardly finds words.

Subscripts serve up statistics at a blinding rate, old mate.

 

The secret life of a firebug is blazingly on view

whilst elsewhere stories emerge of unlikely saviours.

 

Fire remains unmoved where it comes to rest

air brown with dry meanings for days afterwards.

 

Certainty is that at the end of these short stories

everyone will stand up, brush down and keep going,

 

at least one of whom will write a letter to a friend

explaining his technique of showing without emoting.

 

Pages caught and puffed and burst in the firestorm.

Online reports disintegrated inside of burnt-out terminals.

 

Fire, the character, looks like nothing but smoke till close up

changing direction with unpredictable speed.

 

Stare at it how we will when fire’s under control

plain speech wants a way forward, left with nothing.

 

A blank page survives fire’s disappearing act

where writers make accounts, deft on show, light on emote.

 

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