The Last Day of Pompeii

Detail of a woman (Yuliya Samoylova)

 from Karl Pavlovich Bryullov's

The Last Day of Pompeii

Presumably, You Say

In your white legs

with the dark moles,

in your fever,

I am trapped like a village

at the foot of a volcano

and there is no time

to abandon this dream.

I wait with my mind

clenched, my teeth shattered,

my mouth open for the season

of your endurance.  It comes

to me with the force of a ghost

disinherited by its ancestors,

shot out of the valley where

life greets each new believer.

And then there are questions.

Innumerable questions.  Should

we pack up the kids and head

for the hills?  What is that

wild thing in your eyes

and why does it only come out

in the evening when you are

grieving, running from the

hot flue of yourself scattered

across the bed of your own ashes?

Presumably, you say,

it will happen when we

least expect it.  And then

there will be the hard monotony

of rubble and ruins to deal with.

In Madagascar there will be

a man slicing his bread

with an empty stare in his eyes.

Tomorrow he will wipe his face

with destiny.  Tonight we will

make our way down the path of

pretense hoping to suck

one more lie in the glow

of a redeeming fire,

strike one more match

against the artifice

of what we know,

believing in the principle

of fever before it freezes

in the throats of two

people made of stone.

  

by Leo