“Hannibal ad portas!
Hannibal ad portas!
Hannibal ad portas!“
Three times the evil tribe’s sighter cried out, so worsenings by lore arrive.
Having completed his report, that sorest decree
The breathless scout fell down unrestoringly, ensured of glory’s leaves.
To flound’ring heart his yet-unstoried hand brief clamoured
The foundling died without further sound, unphantomed unto the canon.
At his bowing out a furrowing frown softened
His xanthous crown like a sun-proud coffin.
Death unfurled his proper countenance
Which blur’s hurl had scourged with hurry’s unbeauty.
For aplomb in duty’s accomplishment, virgins sang dirges
At mound earthen’s verge;
Markless grave more remarkable became,
Moulded to pinion’s shape by master’s work.
Hannibal ad portas
Idea enough to steer to berserk and clucking hysteria in a steely people,
Knowing then the harsh correctitude of those more unsightly portents
Which fate queues as test of truth for rude questers toward importance.
Hannibal ad portas, his unmanageable cortege
The full glory of Hannibal’s uxorious forces a-roaring
Upon Jupiter’s porch, wielding torches.
They laughed, thinking the walls of their collapsible fortress impassable
As an Alp,
Yet here stood that range’s master, from ancient place hailing.
Unfellable elephants with barded faces
Bulks mailchained to repulse Roman rain
Faith-fervour hate maintained the razorine flavour
Of the Carthaginian army’s latent fury in lieu of daily training.
They had arrived, as their lightning leader had proclaimed.
Afraid nakedly were the taking natives of that dateless demesne
Outwardly their dotless cheeks undaunted, lip-haunting battlefroth
The mood-lifting arrival of a thrice-triumphed hero!
Vast mileslong wagon train in tow
The bulk of that force, who swore to burn Rome
Before the groaning, blister-provoking bronze of the tophet
Whose eternal flames every firstborn’s bone’s unholily fed
From the Vesuvian Plateau to the toe-darking snows
Which foe-knowing Barca led freezing soldiers o’er
Ten thousand thousands.
Turd-houses the trousers ‘came as clacking carnyxs resounded
To the hounds the carcasses
To redoubts the marquesses of doubtful virtue
Reading out the Sibylline pronouncements
Consulted when destruction insults Rome
Knowing well the awaiting fate of ancient places
Who warned of hubris failed to change,
Replacing naysaying prophets with useless nodders,
All to ensure the coffers of botherers well coddled.
Well-cobbled streets streaked with screaming blood
Left to mud or pledged to gore-loving Cybele
Cleft limbs, once acourse with sourceless vigour
Still now as wingless angels, pilum-graced. Singer
Sing of once able figures
Of hobbled made-midgets, hovelless in borrowed cups
A groveller now but onto him a prophet’s bull bled out
By its nose ring even a close-thing cow is led out
So men are brought to new destinies by horn threnodies
At all hours Norns mending.
In a use-furrowed campaign cup a plump denari sits.
Forehead driving plough, all pride out lest civil’s hideout die out.
The learned long for the return of sterner virtues, which luxury dried out.
Alchemisland 
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