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Some said I should not buy a Christian slave,
because they were surly, disobedient, reproachful;
but when I saw the girl, naked on the block,
naked in her recent womanhood
(her bared breasts like buds ripening),
the advice of the world became forgettable quickly;
the bid price, inflated, became satisfactory quickly.

Not because she was property, she obeyed me,
but because that was simply her nature's courtesy.
Not because of the threat of a good beating,
or the snap of the lash plowing her backside---
not because of these that I never mentioned,
and never believed in---she served me,
because she had a rather domestic inclination.

We were thrown in together, as they say, on ourselves
because circumstances were hard, and my parents harder;
an apartment's two rooms, and each day's two meals,
(as much as the world deigned to give us in that time)
seemed to call for the most of both of our efforts.
I could not just let her do all of that alone,
but her skill in such tasks far exceeded my own,
and sometimes she had to take matters in hand, and teach me.

Not even her modesty defied me:
when some old friends from school stopped by one day,
and we entertained them, first on the porch,
then on the lawn beside the house----
when they asked to see her naked;
and she, with downcast eyes, opened that tattered robe
and stepped out of it simply because I had asked her.
In the summer sunlight, her long red hair looked orange;
her perfect tan positively tawny;
and her lithe, slender body poised innocently to our gaze.
But when they wanted, jointly, to rend her
(one after the other?---they debated---or try it together?)
I saw the fear in her eyes and could not bear it.
I told them enough was enough, and they were not welcome
to stay for dinner, or even a moment longer.
Hard words and harder blows were exchanged,
and I behaved like a lunatic recently escaped.
My former best friend's nose shattered directly;
he bled, and wept, and threatened more than once to sue;
and I bore the bruise on my knuckles for a week---
my knuckles that had never been in a fight before.

But when she came to me later that night,
on graceful and grass-stained bare feet,
entirely naked and amorous,
eager to be enjoyed and knowing she would not be rent,
she loved me without the least regard to
---my lack of good looks or good experience;
---the promised love poems I had not yet begun to write;
---the pricey learning that had not bloomed into employment.
She loved me with all of herself, but nothing more or less.
Straddling me there in the night, her knees bent at my sides,
she leaned back on her sturdy arms, her breasts heaving,
and that red hair, dark in the night's sultry darkness,
spilled over my legs as the pleasured poured through her,
punctuated by her screams of delight, and for more
I seemed to mount to the stars and felt them
explode within me within her.  Then, both exhausted,
we snuggled like kittens and slept until the next noon.

Family and friends soon, and completely, disowned me.
And I, myself, disowned her in a way:
I set her free---the last of my savings paid for the papers
to be drawn up and filed with all propriety,
in accordance with the rule and custom of the laws of Rome.
But hardship, whatever kind, was not the reason I freed her;
but because that god, to whom she was devoted,
whom she called the Christ had said "Be not called master."
And how could I, not even master my own life,
pretend to be master to the most beautiful living
being I had ever encountered (then or now)?
Of her own liberty, she came back with me;
lived, ate, slept, and struggled through that time  with me;
and I did not know then how long and how hard
she prayed to her god for me.

She always knew, though I did not, whence came the next meal;
and why the rent collector seemed always to avoid us;
and who were the couple of men (I thought thugs or goons)
always keeping a watchful eye on us.
A certain Senator, himself a Christian---
and in whose spacious home a part of the church met
to worship, and she had gone there sometimes---
offered me the post and trust of secretary,
because she had told him I could keep my mouth shut,
and bore no hostility to their faith whatsoever;
beside that, she told, I was rather a good scholar
who knew all the works of all the greatest poets of love.
Soon after that, I began to see Jesus,
who is called the Christ---no not in the flesh
(I know better than that, I am not an Apostle),
in all of the words and gestures of these people.
And I, who had never thought much of people,
once always ready to believe the worst of people,
came to believe in the goodness of these Christians, people,
and the consistency of their ways.  Believing that, I could
also easily believe in God's Son come back from the dead.