Two poems

Whisperings from Old Pompeii

I.

How many left that August morning
for work in the fields, the vineyards,
the shops, civil or military duty
not knowing
(and the wind raged)
(and the rain battered)
(except it was neither)
(wind nor rain but fire)
(and earth and death)
they would never see home again?

II.

The end respected no station.
Hell fell in fingers, fists and stones
the size of Vulcan’s boredom.
The smoke, the awful strangling dust
that seared the city’s bones, everywhere.
The silk-draped princess with her
dainty jewel purse fled into the death.
The stalwart sentry white-knuckled
his shield and lance, defied the final intruder.
The children terrified mute huddled
beneath the bed until the ceiling collapsed.
The favored pet strained against its
chain and chewed its own legs.
The people flew screaming into the fields.
The spiteful gods flew screaming to find them.

III.

At the beach, the admiral swayed downwind:
corpulent, red-faced, wheezing
on a good day,
gasping in the dust,
random-faceted pumice pummeling
the bay bobbing with the stuff, stranding
the landlocked—
the old man figured it out a little too late.

IV.

NOTHING CAN LAST IN UNENDING TIME.
WHEN THE WIND HAS SHONE BRIGHTLY
IT RETURNS TO THE SEA.

—Graffiti scrawled on a wall
at the House of C. Julius Polybius

V.

In the haunted forum we stared
at the great mountain looming, brooding,
lording arrogant, disfigured, its
unapproachable silence
smirking with old memories—
we were nothing, the
tourist-stamped earth
beneath our feet
old news.

God(s) Particle(s)

50 years they searched
beneath the fields
and malls outside Geneva,
running little
protons round and round the
17-
mile racetrack,
the grand collider,
electromagnetic crash test strip,
smashing at light
speed flickers of matter—

come on,
little protons,
the physicists said,
break us off a piece of that
smallest of smalls,
show us the universe
a trillionth of a second young—

and then there was the Higgs,
a data bump,
a flash too nimble,
infinitesimal, to savor
but explanation why some other
simple particles have mass. Really?

50 years and they found the Higgs,
those studious pigs—the God particle
that would connect the dots.
Except it didn’t.
It created more dots—

Five years,
7 quadrillion collisions
later
they search for
that new particle,
that smaller more vital
god
that simply must
exist

(the equivalence of mass and energy
Einstein said
demands it and we know
anything imaginable
will happen)—

quantum forensics is insufferably
bedeviling

_{Image: Nick Fewings / Unsplash}

Contributors

John Corley John Corley is the associate editor of the Angolite. His poetry has appeared in Bleakhouse Review, Hanging Loose, and other publications.

Topics

• Futures

Tags

• incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors
• national poetry month
• poetry