Pompeii, Italy — Ashes to Ashes
by Dawg
Pompeii, Italy–where volcanic shadow fell and daylight never returned,
a city carved in agony, stone mouths parted in screams that the world has learned.
Vesuvius loomed, its rage unbound, raining fire that sculpted despair,
ash sealed every secret: lovers entwined, prayers rising to gods who weren’t there.
Ancient streets spiral with memory, basalt arteries choked by cinder and bone,
market stalls abandoned mid-bargain, the clatter of commerce turned to drone.
Porticoes blackened by sulfur, frescoes cracked beneath the weight of unending night,
statues hold their last expressions–hope, terror, surrender–caught in that deadly light.
Within the amphitheater, applause silenced by molten stone,
rows of empty seats cradle the shadows of those who’ll never return home.
Murals fade where wine once spilled, laughter trapped in the plaster’s veins,
echoes chase through ruined courtyards, haunted by a thousand silent refrains.
Night falls over Pompeii, ancient wind whistling through shattered domes,
a chill that is not merely weather, but memory searching for homes.
Pale figures drift by moonlight, open-mouthed, forever still,
cloaked in volcanic sorrow, lingering at the edge of will.
In Pompeii’s cryptic silence, the past roars louder than the living can know,
a thousand lives frozen–mothers, soldiers, slaves–in an unbroken tableau.
No goddess or mortal was spared when Vesuvius tore the world apart,
only the city remains, a monument to grief, scorched deep into the heart.
Ashes to ashes–the mantra burned into every fractured stone,
Pompeii: haunted cradle of tragedy, where the spirits walk alone.
Every midnight, in this grave of memory, Pompeii breathes dread anew–
a city embalmed in suffering, waiting for the world to hear what it always knew.