Two fools were sitting by a blazing fire / Cooking stones to eat. / The stones were taking a long time.

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Two fools were sitting by a blazing fire

Cooking stones to eat.

The stones were taking a long time.

Said one fool to the other:

I have a rose in my hat,

What shall I do with this rose?

I don't know, said the other.

How about

Throw it in the fire?

Just then along came a third fool

Who smelled the rocks cooking.

May I join you two blithering fools?

Three is better than too,

Said the first fool,

But first help us.

We are going to throw this rose

In the fire but it is very heavy.

Just then a poet came along.

What are you doing you blithering idiots?

It looks like you are about to burn that rose.

Yes, said the fools in unison.

We don't know what else to do with it.

Do you have a suggestion?

The poet thought for a second.

You should wait for a hawk to fly by

And let the hawk have it.

He will surely reward you

With a sack of gold

Or he will be your friend for life.

Works for me, said the first fool.

Me too, said the others in unison.

And together they watched the sky

As it filled with stars.

. . . . . . . . .

In this poem the role of the poet is ambiguous. Is he mocking the fools? Is he himself a fool? He doesn't want the fools to throw the rose in the fire, so he distracts them. Leaving them watching for the magical hawk as the sky fills with stars, is a way of saying that they are out of meaningful options. The best we can hope for is that they will stop being violent. Hawks do not bring sacks of gold, nor do they fly at night. All that has happened in the poem is, thanks to the poet, a little time has been bought for the rose.

What is the rose?

Are the three fools us? Are the stones the Earth that we are consuming? Is the fire a metaphor for our power over nature?

Way back in the beginning, some of the oldest stories tell us that the world was dark until someone stole fire from the gods or spirits. But in this poem, the fools are the witless descendants of those fire-stealers, their deadend beneficiaries.

Here the poet has no power,except to stop the clock. Many of the poems I have written over the past few years, especially during Covid, have been about stopping or stretching time; most recently "The Hourglass" (the repost of a 2016 poem, followed by a new interpretation), is the best example but there are a number of them including two poems that go together, "It happened before" and "It happened after". Anyway, a poem like this that depicts humans, men actually, as genetic simpletons*, is dark indeed. The descendants of those who stole fire from the gods, they have descended to the level of using fire to cook stones so they can keep devouring the Earth. They have long since forfeited their birthright to a meaningful destiny.

* Their simple-mindedness is not conditioned, it is due to an evolutionary regression.

(Article changed on Nov 14, 2021 at 7:33 AM EST)

(Article changed on Nov 14, 2021 at 7:36 AM EST)

(Article changed on Nov 14, 2021 at 8:08 AM EST)

Authors Website: https://garylindorff.wordpress.com

Authors Bio:

Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music". Lindorff calls himself an activist poet, channeling his activism through poetic voice. He also writes with other voices in other poetic styles: ecstatic, experimental and performance and a new genre, sand-blasted poems where he randomly picks sentence fragments from books drawn from his library, lists them, divides them into stanzas and looks for patterns. Sand-blasted poems are meant to be performed aloud with musical accompaniment.


He is a practicing dream worker(with a strong, Jungian background) and a shamanic practitioner. His shamanic work is continually deepening his partnership with the land. This work can assume many forms, solo and communal, among them: prayer, vision questing, ritual sweating, and sharing stories by the fire. He is a born-pacifist and attempts to walk the path of non-violence believing that no war is necessary or inevitable.