The Fourth of July

We were safe and sane then, I

Holding sparklers and red flares, my

Father nailing pinwheels to the telephone pole.

The policeman stopped to watch the Roman candle

Crest our oh's and ah's, and trick

To the spin of his billystick.

That night a closeness fired the burning air,

Chimneyed to bright novas of no other year.

Vesuvius cones, skyrockets wedged

In the soft asphalt at the darkness edge,

Highlighted in bold relief, in alternate

Silver and gold, where we stood

Then, my father and I~ while phoenixes

And salamanders of combustion whizzed-

In a fused rapport, a pyrotechnic display,

Celebrating Interdependence Day.

What artifice spun this wheel of fire

To a joy of Jews accustomed to its other

Feel?-smouldered to bombardments

Of the flesh more searing than the bitumens

Of Belshazzar? Against ancestral dark

We held for each to see the glittering firework

Purchased at great price,

In whose central burn, most vividly, the family's

Holiday was holocaust. This brazen calf,

Cooked to a golden turn by love,

Was deified by flame and the words we spoke.

By rockets' many-coloured glare the favored

son was cloaked;

The father-days numbered-cared, partook.

O, what a detonation at the final spark!

The whole skyfull of astronomy fell

To sediment in ginger ale.