Tag: ancient rome
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The death of Antinous
The retinues have filed out for the night With each subsequent wine, the whiny entitled Emperor chides His lover and mate for suggesting castration “So that further decay might be held at bay!” That higher registers he should maintain Until no brown remained in the Emperor’s mane, Gone the way of his eyes, the same…
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Drowned in the Nile to renew a Tiberside tyrant’s flagging vigour, or Emperor Hadrian’s lost love poems
Aquila at nighttime zenith His toga peeled back appealingly, revealing Antinous’s yet-congealing future features His fallow chin without shadow of beard’s hint Hadrian’s preying gaze ere surveillant Signalled a willingness to be availed Of; he the idle cat His captor the long rows of well bedded mint. By dint his status, a rustic Below but…
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Yellowism
For every Roman soldier dead Sow daffodil bulbs in his stead In memory, the century flower Endowed with egg or butter’s burnished splendour.
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Walbrook Mithraeum
Barring time travel’s starry unveilment, or wormhole displacement We’ll never know how Mithras was worshipped below this pavement At Walbrook. This won’t brook our efforts to decode the frescoes in wall nooks, Brooks where flowed unctuously the lumbering blood of a missed Christ, More questions these deceptive inscriptions provide, Yet we continue trying to tease…
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Cityscrape
Not in one day had pagans built great Rome, strong even today, When would Her intact flower’s strength at touch’s hint decay. The rock’s proximity to the places of crossed rods, oaths of office. Crossed the coppice in odd shoes Folded neatly the clothes of an officer Cloves masked the stink of the drink that…
Alchemisland 