Red Frescoes Walls, Pompeii

Jena Woodhouse

Beneath the pumice, archaeologists

discovered frescoed walls

red as Arretine-ware glaze,

ripe as wines of Tuscany,

rich as blood distilled with lava,

fresh as gore in the arena,

scarified by casual graffiti.

Overlaid on walls whose base

vibrates with shock still palpable,

portraits gaze with solemn eyes,

some worldly-wise, some innocent;

now with hindsight hectic frames

appear as pyres and sheets of flame,

backlighting foreshortened lives,

icons the inferno spared:

art preserved by that same chemistry

as stifled and interred—