Why, oh why, a last Vesuvio Sonnet ?
They’re flowing like lava down my mountain-side.
What molten rocks have got inside my bonnet
To want to stanch the flow of words broadside ?
This volcano fever , these pictures of burning woe,
His sea of pitch and bitumen, tephra , ash,
Mr. Dante made into sadism, slow.
He fed it hot to swine that love their mash.
My Catholic world, your Hell is bleak, pure terror.
God’s all-knowing, male . ( He makes no error… )
How reconcile good saints, so meek and mild ?
Vesuvio’s deep with horrors and with anguish.
Its lost souls howl and yowl , forever languish
In brimstone storm, in seismic yawings wild.