A moment of terror frozen
In statues of ashfall,
A pyroclastic arrest
Of metabolism .

Entire settlements drown
In pumice and tephra,
Screams cut short
By the shifting matrix
Of travelling particles
Adrift .

Volcanic missiles and cinders
Of Hell rain down
On Herculaneum and Pompeii :
Thousands in the everyday end
Abruptly, the snipped by
The Fates .

The black skies brood over
The wake below, the sheet lightning
Freezing the wasteland smoke
With every bleak flash .