Vesuvius Flows into Jacob More, by Baruch November

Mount Vesuvius in Eruption, by Jacob Moore (Scotland). 1780.

Vesuvius Flows into Jacob More

1-
The dark entrails of seraphim unbind,
raw, from the firmament.
Pompeii confesses to Jacob More.
He pronounces the last rites.

2-
An elderly woman,
everyone’s grandmother,
though not once a mother,
turns to her grindstone again.

She's the one who drinks
the first seething
exhale of Vesuvius;
Jacob More drinks the last.

3-
The doves addled coos
harrow the ears.
They surrender wings to ash.

Under layers of crimson paint
no longer will they bring peace
to the maritime.

4-
Jacob More leaves his stool,
walks the pebbled sand,
looks to another mountain,
thinks he can make out
Pompeii’s desperate refrain:

"Paint me as though killer spoke thunder
Out of scarlet clouds,
As though my blood was the first to weep
Upon eastern sands."

5-
Infinite night drops on Pompeii
through muffled screams of falling.
The sand converts to glass.
The petulant hiss resounds
as molten paint runs into saltwater.

6-
The parched canvas beseeches
the doves to surface,
but Jacob More has painted the final rites,

and hardened over
by centuries, Pompeii can’t
shake itself from a dream.

Baruch November
​
Baruch November’s collection of poems entitled Dry Nectars of Plenty won BigCityLit’s chapbook contest in 2003. His poems and short fiction have been featured in Lumina, Paterson Literary Review, New Myths, The Forward, and the Jewish Journal. He teaches literature and writing courses at Touro College and lives in Washington Heights, New York.