Burning Books

They are only burning books in the snow:
sepia edges crisp in their slow, idle turning,
as though by a leisured reader for the final time,
page by brittle page, flickering,
with the strange blue flames of chemicals in the ink
and possibly impregnated
in the substance of the paper;
hot, lacunate, lost to the air in floating flakes
as sparrows sing   
words         words          words

Clive Donovan
 
If you have any thoughts on this poem, Clive Donovan would be pleased to hear them.