Salamander Embers

You can learn from those of cloth

With a vibrant, fibrous froth

From the vanquishers of stillness and the enemies of sloth,

From your plush and noble symbiotes with blue cotton in their veins,

From your brains.

For each of them that has a voice

Would raise if given half a choice.

When you laze about through day and week,

Ignore your stufflings when they speak,

Then you have called a wind most bleak

To scour the town and burn it down

To Salamander embers.

And the danger is the heat

Which will strike you as a treat

Which will tie you down to nothing with an ardor sickly sweet,

Which will make you think the embers are the best that you can get--

Want to bet?

Even animals of fluffy pith

Are able to transcend this myth.

Should you raise your head in fear and cry

"What never lives need never die,"

Then you'll have called the ender nigh,

A fire lost, a holocaust

Of Salamander embers.