Poem – The Books are Being Burned

Well hello there! I have returned from the rainy but beautiful country of Ireland. I had an absolutely amazing two weeks there, and I’m so grateful to God for all the work he did in my heart and in the other people serving with me. He truly is a great God full of compassion and love for the lost and broken people that do not know him!

This week I’m doing another poem. I wrote this after reading Fahrenheit 451. I was really impacted by the beauty of the writing, as well as the seriousness of the message it contained. I don’t need to go in depth about it here, because I have here. I will just say that the theme of the books being regarded as evil and irrelavant things that need to be eliminated impacted me pretty heavily. Especially since I see that trend towards dismissing books becoming bigger in our culture today. So I wrote this poem based off of the theme of book-burning in Fahrenheit 451.

 

 

Words go up in smoke.

Pages wither like dying butterflies.

The wisdom of the ages consumed in flames.

And no one cares.

Why?

Because books have become objects of ridicule.

Having knowledge is considered better

than having wisdom.

The vessels of wisdom are considered worthless drivel.

Rubbish.

To be burned.

What changed?

Why are books now disdained, feared, and hated?

Why is their wisdom and beauty considered trash?

Because people decided that movement was better

than stillness.

Blaring noise was better

than silence.

Head knowledge was better than

heart wisdom.

The hunger for learning

was replaced by the hunger for instant pleasure.

Books were no longer in the picture.

Thus, books have been slowly pushed down

to become nothing more than

dangerous containers

of ideas and words and silly fancies and feelings.

Stuff to be ignored,

shut down

and destroyed.

Books are to be burned.

Because that’s all they’re worth.

No one cares

Because their minds have become numb

With constant movement,

and noise,

and knowledge being pounded into their brains.

And above all,

the striving for instant pleasure.

No one recognizes the infinitely precious treasure

that books are.

The beauty and wonder and wisdom

that can be found in their pages.

The numbed-brain people can’t appreciate it.

No one needs books any more.

No one wants books any more.

No one cares about books any more.

So the books burn.

 Pages crumple into black smoke.

Books melt into ashes.

Words dissolve into nothing.

The wisdom of the ages goes up in smoke.

The books are being burned,

and nobody cares.