by Julia Griffin

“One of Pompeii’s most celebrated buildings, the House of Lovers, will reopen to the public on Tuesday, 40 years after it was severely damaged in an earthquake. …
The name of the house, which dates back to the first century BC, was derived from a Latin inscription … that translates as: ‘Lovers like bees pass a sweet life like honey. I wish it were so.'”
—The Guardian

Love is pressure, love is fire,
Love’s a burning lode:
Crammed with carbonous desire,
Mountain tops explode.

Love’s a sequence of assaults;
Love’s a livid scar,
Hiding deeply-buried faults.
Love knows where they are.

Sweet amid the quake debris’
Pyroclastic flow,
Lovers live like honey bees!
(Would that it were so.)