Notre Dame Inferno Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Paris weeps for Her Lady
Nine centuries up in smoke
Flames race 300 feet to the spire's tip
The stonework stares in horror, charred and scarred

Flying buttresses, soaring vaulted roof beams
Plunge like Lucifer into a fiery pit

Two centuries to build- 5,000 oaks chopped down
The sweated labour of serfs
63 minutes to wreck- arson or carelessness?

Citizens fall to their knees on the banks of the Seine
In prayer and stupefaction
The scene plays out in the screens across the globe

The spire that stood strong through
Revolutions, holy wars and Hitler
A nation's pride, its great religious icon
Crashing and burning

Here Henry V1 of England was crowned king
Here, Mary Queen of Scots married the young dauphin
Here, Pope Pius VII crowned Napoleon Bonaparte emperor
Here Huguenots defaced the sacred treasures
Here Victor Hugo set his Quasimodo
To dance into our hearts and minds in prose

Did gargoyles & chimera gasp in horror?
At the cackling, crackling flames
Did Marie, Anne-Genevieve, Denis, Gabriel
Etienne, Benoit-Joseph, and Marcel
Maurice, Jean-Marie, and Emmanuel
Ring out the roof's death knell

What of the Crown of Thorns
The sacred relic of the cross
The nail from the crucifixion
The priceless artefacts
The Petites Mays
The magnificent stained glass windows?

Paris watched the destruction of History
Beloved of pilgrims and worshippers

But the cathedral's bees, under a great rose window
A hundred feet below the shattered roof
Safe in their hives, calmed by the smoke
Having no lungs to scorch
Survive to make their honey for the poor