The Last Day of Pompeii...A Poem
People talked and played with friends and pets,
enjoyed the sun, let soar their pleasures high
with birds so free in flight, in song in flowered tree
that matched the joy of hearts in honeyed southern
air and light. Life was as it's thought to be.
What could contradict such view? This would be
another glorious day in paradise.
One dog, then all, began to whine, then howl
with inexplicable distress. Cooing doves
were driven from their trees in grey-white rout
of whistling wings. Roosters dissonant crowed
in chorus as if the sun were midday born.
But something far different – like Frankenstein to man –
was coming to life, manufactured by god.
The rumbling began, impatient, low,
shivering walls, trembling cup and platter
in nervous crockery nudge and chatter.
Hanging planters commenced to sway.
The rumble went away...then magnified, returned
when muscular Vesuvius flexed and boomed ---
with startled glances cast. Dishes fell
from shelves to crash and shatter on the floor.
As the volcano flared ascendant,
water in garden fountains ebbed and died,
one last living jet to heaven sent.
Blasts of sound and smoke exploded, ash and stone
blown sky-high, cascaded molten down
upon the once god-favored town, now god-rejected,
hideous in its destiny, the fair face
of its populace filled with final fear.
The volcano assault sent immensities of earth
and smoke and flame, so high, so dark,
the sky was filled with darkness,
the great sun overcome, as if flung in a sack
and thrown away. Not a glimmer remained,
no shard of light to break the blackness
of day turned night. Nothing could be seen
but blackness; the earth and Pompeii's world
were shaken to their core. People died
from darkness, drowned in air thick as dirt,
thick enough to plant a fig tree in.
They died from crushing stone, the fumes, the smoke
that had no life to give, but all to take.
All was taken. Life, love, hope, home.
All dead in attitudes grotesque, at peace;
some like sleep, some in struggle to survive,
breathe, shelter, protect their own.
But they did not die fast enough
to deny awareness of their fate.
They recoiled, reeled in shock and horror,
unbelieving; shrieked and screamed
in disbelief as much as loss and pain.
Stunned beyond imagining by fact beyond escape,
the fantasy-loving mind of man collided
head-on with reality. Who can know
that such a thing can ever come to pass
in such a world as this?
It is said the blind were fortunate
because the darkness of the eye
and death that everywhere descended,
though dark as darkest night,
was no darker than their usual day.
They did not have to see the ending
of their world as they, too, passed away.
Dire forces vast, beyond
the child-like mind of man to comprehend;
such savage devastation, the foundation
of the world, no matter how gaily apparitioned.
The citizens of Pompeii came to see,
to understand, if for one moment only,
how slight the things of man, no matter
how seeming grand. Beyond life's fairest kiss,
there is a deep, oh, such an abyss
that swallows all, contains in gentleness,
great, gulping horror and ferocity,
all that have ever lived upon the earth.
Farewell, smoke-stained, lava-burned and buried
Pompeii. Your frescoes and mosaics interred
with your agony for two thousand years,
at last revealed, that we may think on you,
and the nature of our own brief lives
(think not this was but some other ones' bad luck
that has no meaning for our destiny).
Meditate on god's strange love
-- like wrath to other eyes –
that brings such dismal end to his creation.
Think then on nature, her rich, clear sky,
the song of birds, the seeming solid, life-filmed
crust and grace of earth that masks the molten force
below that ever kills and kills us all.
Then wonder at the evil ways of man, the wounded,
seething soul that dwarfs by cruel immensity
the cauldron heat, intensity of great Vesuvius.
Our future is hidden for a time
by fair enticement, the blinded eye of man,
until the world's and our collapse. We inhabit
the unstable satellite of a fiery star; how could
we not be consumed by such intemperance?
The pork chop newly-laid in the cool, black pan
knows as much of orange-tipped flame below
as this madness of the world is known to man.
Copyright by Don Gray
Don Gray Art • Poems