Remembering Fireworks

Credit: Pixabay

This poem focuses on the memory of an enjoyable experience that has just finished.

Always as if for the first time we watch

The fireworks as if no one had ever

Done this before, made shapes, signs,

Cut diamonds on air, sent up stars

Nameless, imperious. (...)

This first sentence is a description of the enthusiasm with which we watch fireworks.The first person plural seems to be a generalization which includes all human beings.  In the first line, there is a hyperbaton that  rearranges the order of the sentence to emphasise the first-time excitement people experience whenever they watch this spectacle. Even though we have seen fireworks before, we feel as if we are watching something completely new, “as if no had ever /done this before”.

In these lines, there are a number of caesuras at irregular intervals that create a staccato pace and reminds us of the explosions and different duration of the fireworks.
The rhythm accompanies a detailed description of the fireworks: first, they made “shapes”, which become “signs”, as if they tried to convey some meaning.  Then, the shapes they create ,“diamonds” and “stars”, suggest their beauty, their value, and their light. The stars are “nameless” because they are new in the sky, and “imperious”  because they demand immediate attention as they last a very short time.

   (...) And in the falling

Of fire, the spent rocket, there is a kind

Of nostalgia as normally only attaches

To things long known and lost. (...)

In this sentence, the word falling, at the end of the line, marks the end of the fireworks. The alliteration of “f” in “falling of fire” reminds us of the way in which they vanish. “Spent rocket” explains that the fireworks have already exploded and are no longer visible. The end of the spectacle produces a feeling of nostalgia which is common to all things “long known and lost”.

The assonance and alliteration of the last line accompanies the mood. Besides, many of the consonants can be stretched and sound sad, which emphasises the feeling of nostalgia.

                     (...)Such an absence,

Such emptiness of sky the fireworks leave

After their festival. (...)

In the following lines,  there is a hyperbaton in order to emphasize the sadness and absence people feel after the show ends. The repetition of the word “such” conveys the extent of the

“absence” and “emptiness” the fireworks leave, which is so enormous that it can't be measured. The word festival suggests the joy and happiness of the spectacle, which by contrast, makes the absence sound even more regrettable.

                               (...) We, fumbling

For words of love, remember the rockets,

The spinning wheels, the sudden diamonds,

And say with delight “Yes, like that, like that”.

The word “fumbling” suggests that people search awkwardly and desperately for adequate words to describe the passion the fireworks arouse in them and the happy memories they bring. However, all they are able to utter are clumsy words which fall short to describe the wonders of the fires and the delight they produced.

Oh and the air is full of falling

Stars surrendered. We search for a sign.

The last line suggests that the memories of the fireworks are so vivid that people seem to be able to still see them falling in the air, in spite of the fact that they have already disappeared. That is why they search for a sign, i.e. a piece of evidence that they are still there.

The word “full” contrasts with the “absence” and “emptiness” they left in lines 8 and 9. The fireworks are such an enjoyable experience that they linger in people´s memory with such a force that they appear to continue existing even when they have finished.

Therefore, the fireworks may be a metaphor for those things we enjoy with fresh delight and that are extended in our memories because of the impact they made on us. We have the intangible sensation that we can make them happen again in front of our eyes.

María Sol Lindon- Wendy Hortis.