Fiction Adaptation Unit: Research

The Burning of the Leaves by Laurence Binyon

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves,
They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke
Wandering slowly into the weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.
The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust:
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost.
Spark whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.
Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before,
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there:
Let them go to the fire with never a look behind.
That world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.
They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;  
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes. 
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours. 
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

This poem was written in 1942, shortly before Laurence Binyon's death in 1943. He was one of Britain's Great war poets. From reading this later poem he wrote I gathered themes of 'change', 'destruction', 'having no regrets', 'hope', 'letting go of the past', 'nature's cycles'. I also felt that it was a poem full of senses and images that contrast and change. It features some inspirational lines such as: 'That world that was ours is a world that is ours no more' and 'All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost'. The rhyming pattern is abcadc, in four stanzas of 6 lines each. As Binyon was a war poet, it can be thought that this poem is based on the war and its ending. The war is criticized, noone wins because there was so much destruction and loss of lives at the end that you have to let go of the past. Nature can move on and grow, but we are damaged. However, more plainly, the poem is about a forest fire in autumn and moving into spring. I think this poem can be interpreted into many meanings, I hope to adapt it by not taking it into a literal sense, but to create a video that represents the mood and emotion from the poem. I plan on presenting juxtapositions and a possible disequilibrium to equilibrium structure. I also want to use techniques such as timelapse and possibly music and written words on the screen and shallow depth of field techniques. I'm undecided on who I would cast and what their role will be. I would like to give a sense of the world and how powerful nature can stand against human errors.