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Following the devastating fire at Notre- Dame, the Booker Prize winner Ben Okri has written a poem, especially for Broadcasting House, in praise of the cathedral, its spirit, and the muscle and faith that built it. After requests from listeners to hear it again, and with Ben's permission, we have posted it in full: Notre Dame is telling us something. How the Orioles weep. Something in our soul is burning. Those alchemical flames the flesh Of the mother are devouring. Turbulence in the streets; Rotating anger in the air. Division across the seas; Swans of peace living in fear. Above, the earth dwindles As mercury consumes the teeth Of the young and chemicals Plough the guts of children Before the seeds of death are planted. No prayers anywhere. Angels have fallen like tears; The winding stairs lead nowhere. And in Europe the bells are ringing For a dark angelus where faith has gone Underground and a dark mass of unbelief Stalks the stables and the high tables. Notre Dame is telling us something About the wisdom beyond grief. We fight over cabbages while the spirit Of things is perishing in open view. In alchemy only when things burn Are things made true and new. The orioles are weeping For the dwindling of our souls And the smallness of the goals That obscure the cathedrals And the good laws and the little progress We have made from wars To civil liberties, from the comfort Of our parish minds to the generosity Of our linked hands. O the orioles are weeping For the wars that will be fought Because of the simple things not taught Like the underlying unity And our fundamental trinity And how when the way is lost All good things perish And we will never know the cost. Notre Dame is telling us something In its flames and its fallen spire We have been sinking lower Mesmerised by lies, destroying truth Instead of rising higher. Everything that wrenches our hearts Like signs written in the sky With unearthly hands Are inscriptions to our times That with wise eyes we should read. Our souls are starving, our hearts grow cold The young are either climate-fighting Or are in quiet despair perishing While on islands empire-nostalgia Secretly and not so secretly obsesses the old. Our politics keeps looking back To something that never was or has gone Rather than embracing the present Like the dawn's nightingale song Or the things that we all lack. Notre Dame is telling something About the holes into which we are falling Seeking power seeking power Losing meaning in the falling tower. The spire touching the sky Inclined our eyes up high, Led us upward to our best selves. Maybe in these falling times While a dim bell across Europe chimes, That fallen spire will re-unite us Beyond the greed of our separate ways Back to pilgrim roads and singing days. They are singing Ave Marias Outside burning Notre Dame And across the world we are perhaps Remembering how fine we can be In the symphony of our deeds And the harmony of our needs For whether it is the Buddhas Of Bamiyan or Grenfell's cladding Or that home of alchemy and grace In Paris burning, it is us who burn too, And the loss is the unborn child's And the beggar in Timbuktu All culture is shared Beneath the realm Of sleep and awakening. Notre Dame is telling us something. Awake, man, awake. Awake, woman, awake. Flames are spreading in our every sleep. Flames of the earth. Flames of the future. Sky-flames Polar-flames. Truth-flames. Orioles are weeping. Bells are ringing. Why are you still sleeping?