Private Pompeii

To find my industrial Pompeii,
All in miniature, in subtle association,
I would turn from the main track, down a disused siding
That dropped in a snarl of vegetation
Under the high tip of the fissured, swollen
Dump at Trethosa, where past wrongs could sting.

That gravel wedge gripped in its round belly
The house where my father had grown afraid,
And where, at the age of seven, I studied music,
But failed to learn it in such cramping shade.
Vesuvius in the ghostly bed
Rumbled louder than the organ,
And on the musty couch a violin
Always caught my eye, distracting
Before the moment of flight.

That cottage, where my pagan air
And discordant fingering were rooted, was gone from sight,
Beyond hope of excavation. What remained
Of my Pompeii myth was soon starkly seen:
Long rows of masonry, crumbling brick,
Pillars, fragments of wall, the tall
Broken columns of stacks. In sun-glare
The stone of the drying-sheds was marble-white,
But coarse and ill-smelling, close to the railway line.

I would push through thick reedy grass
On the derelict track, climb up some steps
To the level of the ruins and pass
Through a gap where a door once swung,
Then pad soundlessly over the broad kiln floor,
Which was inches deep in clay-dust. I would stoop,
Scraping harmless powder where, twenty years before,
Clay was baked as flames lunged and ran
Inside the furnace, under the kiln-pan.

My father had worked here, rammed his shovel
Into mica-mounds bare as icebergs and soft as dough,
And the wooden trolley had lurched to and fro
Between the open-air tank and the covered kiln.
No roof, not even a rafter still
Survived to help me picture
My father shrouded here, breathing hot steam
That fingered the discords of his dream.

But in my depths, even if mist clung
Around the ruins, I was aware
That my Pompeii fable would be outgrown –
Vesuvius, scorched bed, crushed roof and garden
Become a mere traveller’s tale at my fate’s turn,
And a sweet-stringed, post-pagan ardour be housed and born.