Maybe Mr Brontë’s fear of fire came earlier,

Before TB, night sweats, fever, blood-tinged sputum

Took his wife, entire kin, five daughters and a son,

Till near blind, like Rochester, and alone

He circled the table in the parlour: a lost prayer.

Perhaps Patrick Brontë could see himself like this:

Standing on the edge of a precipice,

Where a man loses everything he loves

And calls that fire, combustible destroyer, oxidizer,

No air for breath, chronic cough, a fight for air.

Maybe Mr Brontë had no word for it but fire

So – a man should fear it, the thing that runs ahead,

Consuming everything he loves, until it dawns too late:

There is no fine curtain to draw in any stone room

Between the living and the dead.