Thank you for dying

so dramatically and suddenly.

Our archaeologists and tourists

appreciate it, appreciate

your frescoes and fountains,

brothels and bakeries,

your eerie, grey corpses.

Even Pink Floyd are grateful.

 

Your emperor was no help.

If here, he too

would be a doom-faced corpse

as you are now.

Corpse-town Pompeii,

Vulcan's plaything.

Violence on the violent,

tombs entombed,

sky raining horror, air molten

pumice-pummeled bodies burning,

flaming togas, engulfed erotica.

No longer slave and master, companions

in twisted, grey, gasping death.

 

Running futile, streets lethal

Hiding futile, cellars lethal

Money futile, shops lethal

Struggling futile, air lethal

Swimming futile, harbour lethal

Praying futile, temples lethal.

No escape, no hope, no exit.

Here you die, she dies, he dies,

we all die.

The whole town dies,

only ash, ash, cinders and more ash.

 

You had warnings,

knew the hovering threat,

the imminent eruption.

You refused to believe, think, move, know.

 

I know

the Vesuvius in my life

and the settled town below it.