The flowers of Vesuvius

can't pick the flowers of Vesuvius
anymore
they've become golden gypsy rings
for death's slick
elegant
fingers
the ones which wrote all my
poems

they've become stones on the road
to nowhere
they've become the road's
cruel
crowning
achievements

they've become the pointless
wanderer's
trophy
the Polish man of the mountain's
legend

can't pick the flowers of Vesuvius
any more

then why I still madly hold on to
the empty
clandestine
vase
in other people's
hell
corridor
of long-gone lava
shadow of dawn