The Cremation Of Shelley

There on the Italian pizza beach
Shelley’s funeral pyre burned brightly
like the lighthouse of Vesuvius

Byron and Hunt retired to their carriage
to get drunk. The horses wondered
why Shelley’s verse never mentioned

their standing here in the cold wind waiting.
The seawater in Shelley’s lungs
evaporated, H two oh by H two oh,

rising, imitating freedom
in the Italian sky, skewered,candy-like.
Shelley’s hair red like sunset,

the last few lines of poetry still in his head
for all to see
written pale in ashes.