Fire
We
come with fire.
With fire as comfort.
The flickering red heart at the centre of the
dancing, bewitching yellow petals. The reassuring tang of charred pine or oak. We
warm our frozen hands and feet as eaves and joists crackle and burn. Watching
the smoke and sparks swirl up and away until they merge with the ice crystal
stars. The juices stain our beards as we crunch the bones of bayonet-roast hare.
Ignoring the wary howling of the wolves, the firelight reflected in their
hungry, yellow eyes.
We move on.
With fire as retribution.
Like Torquemada with more victims to find.
Tongues to loosen. Heretics to root out. Souls to liberate. We could erect the
stakes, stack the chords, bind the sinners. Listen to their prayers and
pleadings and screams. But that takes too long. There are quicker ways. The
church is wood, even its garishly painted onion of a spire. We herd them in. A
generous dousing of petrol. The satisfying crack and flash of a grenade. Mass
martyrdom. A flame thrower helps if it is raining.
We move on.
With fire as purification.
When the phosphorous ignites and the white-hot
flood engulfs the tenements. Rats and partisans scream and flee, their coats
ablaze. Cockroaches, fleas and lice sizzle into nothing. Two-legged vermin we
shoot, then dance drunkenly around the bonfire like frenzied revellers on
Johannisnacht. Until, with walls, roofs, everything ablaze the buildings stagger
and collapse in an incandescent eruption of sparks. By morning all resistance
is reduced to a pile of smoking, sterile ash, which the wind blows away across
the steppe.
We move on.
And fire.
The field guns roar like the crescendo of a
chorus of angry gods. Odin’s hammer thundering, its sparks the armour piercing
shells that explode against the tanks. How small they look from a distance, how
helpless as they crawl across the steppe like squat beetles. One flails its
proboscis impotently against the sky. How satisfyingly they burn. Diesel,
cordite, leather, wood, men.
We move on.
To Hell.
Ash rains down like snow. We trudge like ghosts
among the ruins. The city is ablaze. The flames’ reflection turns the river
into liquid fire, blood-red Phlegethon burning through its heart. Surprisingly the
water is still cool enough to soothe our ash-scoured throats and fire-tanned
faces. We are approaching Dante’s seventh circle. The flames lick at us in
friendly welcome. We are home now, in Vesta’s hearth where our metal will be tested,
melted, reduced and re-cast.
If we are lucky, there will be enough of our
helmets, belt buckles and buttons left to make tin soldiers. To be played with
by children dreaming of conquest.
Comments
Post a Comment