II Anna stands in a ring of thawed snow, stirring a trash fire in an iron drum until her face flares, shriveled and intent, and sparks rise in the night along with pages of burning ash from the week's papers, one peeling away from the rest, an ashen page framed in brilliance. For a moment, the words are visible, even though fire has destroyed them, so transparent has the page become. The sparks from this fire hiss out among the stars and in thirty years appear as tracer rounds. They didn't want to know the past. They were hoping in this way you could escape it. Carolyn Forché The Angel of History

FIRE