Vesuvius Puts Her Defence Before The Public Poem by Sheena Blackhall

A pity the Pompeiians didn't read the signs
Things had been building up for a while
I suddenly reached boiling point
Blew my top
That's what volcanos do,
We erupt. We burst out, like breaking dams
We smother anything getting in the way

Goodtime girls in the brothels, innkeepers
Gladiators, I gave them impromptu burials
Cocooned them in lava. Total immersion
Like armies drowning in mud at Passchendaele

In the Alley of Skeletons, some victims tried
Shielding their faces with their hands,
And I covered one mother
Desperately clasping her child.

I left not a single crannie or creature unburied:
The Garden of Fugitives
Orchards and harnessed horses
A shackled slave
Bawdy-houses, baths. The forum.
Wineries, the amphitheatre
The temples of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus
The villa of mysteries
The house of the faun
The house of the tragic poet
The house of the gladiators
The house of the surgeon
The house of the Golden Cupids
The house of the lovers
The house of Leda & the swan

The debris I flung out was equal
To 250,000 double decker buses per second

Pumice stones rained like dropping boulders
I gave birth to horror on a truly apocalyptic scale
A pyroclastic flood, a tsunami of fire, ash, lava.
The layer of magma underneath my feet spreads154 square miles

When I next erupt, (and trust me, I will)
The event will be massive, affecting 3 million people
I shall wipe Naples entirely off the face of the map
Nothing personal, you understand