Firebuggery

by Simon MacCulloch

Was it deliberate

When you burned the playground supervisor’s leg

With a magnified sunbeam

And the skin-smoke smelled like summer holidays?

Was it foreseeable

That you’d grow up listening to morning radio shows

On the properties of napalm

And learn mathematics from retired fire-bombers?

Was it inevitable

As the brazen bull began to glow

Under the magnified eye of Apollo

That your offerings would draw that gaze upon you?

It was unforgivable,

They told you as they tied you to a rock

Beneath a soot-flecked sky

That fluttered down with beaks to probe your entrails.