I floated like a Monarch, powerful and proud
I frowned at all voices calling me a cloud
My empire stretched to all the rounded corners of the skies
And like many a king full of glory was my rise

Until I heard a jester sing to the gathered crowd
“Tell me, Why still a nomad is this Emperor Cloud,
Why always a black gown is worn by Queen Night
And why the egg fullmoon is all yoke and no white?”

Jester’s stinging words drove into me a little bit of sense
And I thought, “Wind is the Emperor though unseen be his presence!”
Then like a child’s forsaken balloon westward I flew
Over the fields, the hills and the sea as the gusty wind blew

Yet to see the mount defy the wind was a big surprise
“The crown should belong to the mount” was then my surmise
And when I saw the mount being conquered by a man to hoist a flag
I said “Man is the king though armed with only a mountaineer’s bag”

I saw Vesuvius, a scar from where earth once profusely bled
There I beheld the city of Pompiee to whom immortality is wed
And like fond rhymes becoming fonder after young poet’s untimely death
This city is close to heart ever since in youth she drew her last breath

There I heard of Drusilla* in whose eyes the stars did sing
“As I have known love, now even death is a trivial thing”
And there I realized the Emperor who rules us all is Love
And since he has conquered all there is none above

Like a huge castle I still float, I am no longer proud
I smile and nod when I hear a voice calling me a cloud
I am no longer, Sir, the Emperor of the vast skies
And from the sea unnoticed, unsung and unladen was my rise

*Drusilla-On a city wall of Pompiee somebody had scribbled
“Quintus loves Drusilla” two thousand years ago.
We will never know who they were, if this was Quintus’ one sided love,
if they ever married
or if they survived the fury of the volcano called Vesuvius in 79A.D.