Voices of the Stones
These stones sing their dust to my eyes,
veined as they always were like sullen boys,
a long-worn fame their consolation prize.
They bury us with ashes cindered from their former joys.
Those pyroclastic lips of Pompeii's ghosts
speak so fondly of their searing death -
with shells as hollow as an empire's boasts,
and words dissolved, mere molecules of breath:
"We fire-frozen dead could not foresee our fate
but grant you a vision of your future doom.
You proud consumers, are you always late?
There is something that you can't consume.
Vesuvius will wait for us again,
like a patient lover in the rain."