DIIS MANIBUS

The spells, the rites, the pomp, the victims fled,
The fanes all desert, and the lares dead.

Timothy Dwight

O vicious household gods of Rome
you Manes, Lares, Muses, Fates
who graced each crass patrician home,
whose reign this poem celebrates,

Allow me now, in retrospect
to excavate, then analyze.
Depravity with cause, connect;
depriving you of alibis.

Relax your stiff noetic poise
as my plebeian pen records
through lyrical poetic noise
the crown imperial crime awards.

My lines, like foundlings, long to suck
a mother’s milk in measured draft
and dredge some gold from Tiber’s muck;
Lord Christ: illuminate my craft.

ROMULUS, let that wolf-tit go
and REMUS too—unlatch that breast . . .
milk of Etruscan madness, flow,
with empire’s crimes forthwith confessed.

We will not blame your leaden wares
nor ergot mold in rancid bread
for genocidal state affairs,
brutality, and martyred dead.

The Circus, leering, restless, loud,
cheers gladiatorial excess.
The haunted forum’s phantom-crowd
awaits the tyrant’s next address.

He speaks. The wind blows through the arches
stirring up the roadside litter.
Trumpets blare. The legion marches.
Empire’s aftertaste is bitter.

You were Antichrist. That is all.
We cannot dignify your past
or glorify from whence you fall
or praise the mold from which you’re cast.

Christ traveled far from Galilee;
came, saw, conquered—and on it goes.
Our king shall reign eternally;
that she-wolf’s milk no longer flows.