A Coal Fire in Winter

Stanley Spencer, "Fire Alight"

A Coal Fire in Winter

Something old and tyrannical burning there.

(Not like a wood fire which is only

The end of a summer, or a life)

But something of darkness: heat

From the time before there was fire.

And I have come here

To warm that blackness into forms of light,

To set free a captive prince

From the sunken kingdom of the father coal.

A warming company of the cold-blooded–

These carbon serpents of bituminous gardens,

These inflammable tunnels of dead song from the black pit,

This sparkling end of the great beasts, these blazing

Stone flowers diamond fire incandescent fruit.

And out of all that death, now,

At midnight, my love and I are riding

Down the old high roads of inexhaustible light.

Thomas McGrath

"I have come here/To warm that blackness into forms of light". This is a sort of fantasy/fairytale/mythic concoction of a poem. "From a time before there was fire", "a captive prince", "sunken kingdom", "serpents", "blazing stone flowers", "incandescent fruit"... And yet the subject of the poem is common coal. What a mystery it is that such black, cold stuff, should light and warm us. What a treasure poetry unveils one line at a time.