On Pudding Lane (Poetry)

Someone must have been first to smell the smoke
and shout a warning: “Fire!”
Someone must have seen the flames
licking the air like orange flags
above the rooftops flying — leaping higher.

And surely with all that wood about —
the buildings row on row and tinder-dry
someone must have sensed the danger —
how the whole lot could go up
like some random, unintentional funeral pyre.

How did it start? — In some dark kitchen
where a drunken cook fell asleep
and let the dinner burn? Fat sizzling —
spitting — then catching alight.
One can imagine such a scene
and how quickly it took hold and spread
with no fire brigade to damp it down
and total panic in the narrow streets
as citizens ran for their lives
a great grey-black pall rising into the sky
cinders and smut blowing across the river
the monster fire eating through the city
ravenous and unstoppable.

Afterwards, the damage almost biblical
smoke curling bitter from the charred remains
of houses, shops and stables
with the unlucky dead fated
to go down in history
like battle victims unidentified
their graves without names.