flash to ash

The poem composed in a flash, and any revision would leave only ash.

absolute and mortal

Poetry

Its nature is to look
                               both absolute and mortal
as if a boy had passed through
or the imprint of his foot
                                        had been preserved
unchanged
                   under the ash of Herculaneum.

—Carl Rakosi, The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (National Poetry Foundation, 1986), p. 186