Going About Its Business

'Oh wall! I'm amazed you haven't collapsed under the weight of drivel you're holding up! ' the graffiti laughs in self mockery. 'Happy the man who is sleeping with you tonight. I'd be much happier If I were! ' another wall talks to itself jealously. 'You ask, beautiful girl how many kisses I've snatched? I've snatched these ones and... I'm not the only one to do so.' yet another wall kisses 'n' tells in a red on yellow voice. In the silence the wallls are shouting (a babble of voices) Time is smiling. 'I came here. Had a shag - then I went home! ' another announced in a who-gives-a-f**k manner. 'Lucius is stuffing it into Caesu's mouth a drunken scrawl pronounces amongst the inns of THE ELEPHANT...THE LITTLE EAGLE THE MERCURY & APOLLO. It is the 23rd August AD 79 Mount Vesuvius hasn't yet exploded. Pompeii dozes in the lazy sun of this new morning going about its business. *** The Pompeian graffiti still exists in all its extraordinary ordinariness and just goes to show that humans will be humans no matter what peroid of history we come to rest in. Most of it could be...now. And it amazes me that their 'now' is little different than our 'now.' People will be people. It is the day before the explosion and Pompeii is just being Pompeii and hasn't yet stepped into the history that will surround and preserve it. How fragile we all are and life is and how alive and fluent are their voices. Only history is static. *** This 'exchange' dug up from the long ago when time is history and myth combined is worth more than gold and the voices that come back could well be our own. NOTHING CHANGES In the lost city of Ur a fragment survives The father/son divide. The conversation is a confrontaton. startling in its simplicity. Father: 'Where have you been? ' Son: 'Nowhere! ' Seems like there's nothing new under the sun. Nothing... ...changes.