Auto-Da-Fe – Kevin Ireland
yesterday you burnt your olden times:
proposals snapshots invitations declarations
your years of real and fake and flash affection
gusted into blushing flame
your lovers’ hands across your shoulders
baked and blistered cracked then peeled away
your grinning moments at the horn mad beach
fanned hot crackles then twisted into ash
yesterday you gave cruel riddance to the lot
and sent your past loves to the stake
but though I am impressed by ways or codes
so drawn to irreversible convictions
yet I am of that self-same faith which brought
these luckless men to their ordeal by fire
thus should I fear for our remembrance:
confess new fuel to a later blaze?
O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.
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