Requiem
Earth’s
severed windpipe smoulders
Beneath
the anguished sky.
A
sinkhole to Hades.
Imperious,
It
surveys its domain.
Below,
a livid scar seared on the earth’s soft tissue.
Petrified
slopes of black phlegm
Worm
their tentacles deep into the ancient ground.
The
gaunt city cowers in the crystal light,
A
fossilised carcass exhumed.
Steeped
in melancholy,
Its
arteries bled dry to the grit of bones.
Scorched
souls snag on the ruins,
Fluttering
like tattered garments.
A
plump sparrow echoes the song of its forefathers
Its
elegy spiralling up like fluted glass.
Defiant
columns stretch to the sky like signposts to Heaven;
Each
mosaic tile a newborn’s fingernail
Clinging
tightly to the world.
In my
wake drift the numinous ghosts of Pompeii
Throttled
by ashy fingers.
Men
reborn in plaster shrouds
Howl
mutely.
Their
muffled cries thrum
A
drizzle of white noise on my eardrums,
As
charred footsteps traipse through my mind,
Lingering
like a fading dusk.
