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Treasure Trove - A Collection of ICSE Poems and Short Stories
Evergreen Publications
The Cold Within
James Patrick Kinney
About James Patrick Kinney
James Patrick Kinney is an American poet who wrote this poem in the 1960s. Although it was first rejected as being too controversial, it gained popularity rapidly after it had been read out at a council meeting of all religions.
The poem describes the tragic death of a group of six who stand around a fire - each holding on grimly to a log of wood. Allowing their selfishness, prejudice, malice and suspicions to dictate their actions, they refuse to share the log to fuel the dying fire and keep each other warm. Eventually, the fire dies out and in the morning all six of them are found frozen to death, each clutching, even in death, a log that could have so easily saved their lives if only they had overcome the petty barriers of class, race and religion that divided them.
The poem is a simple yet powerful reminder that if we selfishly hold on to the world's resources, and the wealth that it has to offer, if we persist in discriminating on grounds of race, religion, caste, gender and ethnicity, we are all lost!
Six humans trapped by happenstance
In bleak and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood
Or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs,
But the first one held hers back,
For, of the faces round the fire,
She noticed one was black.
The next man looking 'cross the way
Saw one not of his church,
And could not bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.
The third one sat in tattered clothes.
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight.
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.
The last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain.
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game
Their logs held tight in death's still hands
Was proof of human sin.
They did not die from the cold without
They died from the cold within.