Citadel Down

Dawn’s gold­en womb was tainted –
Two citadels of con­crete buckled.

Frag­ments raining,
Whistling winds,
Peo­ple under siege
From ten blocks off;

A hun­dred sto­ries to tell
Of a hun­dred sto­ries to fall,
But none shall live to tell that story;
All were crushed as a bub­ble is popped.

Now comes the methane after-fires,
On a lake of boil­ing kerosene
The final mono­lith thun­der­ing down
Below the rub­ble, a crescen­do of screams …

Three thou­sand dead, two thou­sand imprisoned,
Hearts in holes, eyes closed to pain
Minds numbed in lone­ly office-cells.

And still the fires come,
With a sweet-meat char of flesh in the air,
Cast­ing mori­bund shad­ows in the plas­ter dusk,
Still the fires come.