Pompeii
i tried for soft light
but all that i had on hand then
was fire
burned half a town down
to its knees
lovers and grandparents
and 7-11's
i fit them into my chest
like sunken treasure
screams came and went
and the nights, they
were always too long
i trust you know
i had no other choice
but to be this way
knee to the earth
earth in my mouth
mouth in my eyes
god split us
one thing into two
that was the cruelest trick
you/I halved apart
till nothing else
mattered but the hole
that had been made.
The Last Day of Pompeii -- Karl Briullov
In 79 Pompeii was buried under 4-6 m (13-20 ft) of volcanic ash and pumice when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, one day after Vulcanalia, the festival that honored the god of fire. The site was rediscovered in 1599, when the digging of an underground channel to divert the Sarno river uncovered walls that bore paintings and inscriptions. The papal architect Domenico Fontana unearthed a few more frescoes but had them covered them over again, probably because of their erotic nature. In 1738 Captain Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre, an engineer in the Spanish army, found the remains of the nearby city of Heculaneum (destroyed in the same catastrophe) while digging for the foundations of a summer palace for Carlo VII of Napoli (Carlo V of Sicilia), the future Carlos III of Spain. In 1748 he began prospecting Pompeii, which had been largely unchanged because of the lack of air and moisture. During excavation, liquid plaster was used to fill the voids in the ash that once held human and animal bodies, capturing them in their final moments. His work radically changed the concept of archaeology, which until then concentrated on finding interesting artefacts to decorate the cabinets of private collectors and estates.
ReplyDeleteand broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748.[1] T