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Fireworks

by Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)

Pink faces—(worlds or flowers or seas or stars),You all alike are patterned with hot bars

Of coloured light; and falling where I stand,The sharp and rainbow splinters from the band

Seem fireworks, splinters of the Infinite—(Glitter of leaves the echoes). And the night

Will weld this dust of bright InfinityTo forms that we may touch and call and see:—

Pink pyramids of faces: tulip-treesSpilling night perfumes on the terraces.

The music, blond airs waving like a seaDraws in its vortex of immensity

The new-awakened flower-strange hair and eyesOf crowds beneath the floating summer skies.

And, ’gainst the silk pavilions of the seaI watch the people move incessantly

Vibrating, petals blown from flower-hued starsBeneath the music-fireworks’ waving bars;

So all seems indivisible, at one:The flow of hair, the flowers, the seas that run,—

A coloured floating music of the nightThrough the pavilions of the Infinite.



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