Paroxysm
Tower block collapses in the distance.
A lonely high-rise, condemned.
One side of a fifty-pence piece smiles.
You told me to be there at three,
But the roads were piled with the cars,
And the bodies:
Set off too late, and I could do
Nothing but stand.
Fires begin across the city.
Soon, the countryside burns, too.
The petrol that soaks the streets
Lights up in a line—
The sky is beautiful
And blue.