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At Vaticanus Mons
Knowing that shortly I must put off this my
tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ
hath shewed me.
---2 Peter 1:14
He asked to be crucified upside down,
that old fisherman did (what was his name?):
better to go back to his fishing town,
that rural backwater from which he came.
He has no one else left to bear the blame:
for he brought---from the land where once his home
was---this subversive, faithless heresy
(perhaps revered by hicks in Galilee).
The gods, angered, burned one full fourth of Rome,
and many must be killed to cleanse our shame;
and others must be sold to slavery
(some of them raped or otherwise abused ):
with no hope of reductive clemency.
To "Christians," our mercy has been refused.
Starward
