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Inimitable Livers
We swore a sacred oath before Mark Antony
that we would guard and keep watch on young Ptolemy
now and hereafter, for his life's entirety;
recruiting and training replacements as need be;
loyal until the last blooddrop or final breath,
deterred by neither fear, nor wish, nor even death.
Disguised as a large, foreign merchants' caravan,
we took him safely from the Alexandrian
palace before that upstart runt, Octavian
(who likes to be called Caesar but lacks his grand style)
could enter through the royal gates and order done
to Ptolemy the several tortures that his guile
had shaped obsessively into a master plan
(Octavian the clown thinks himself a great man).
On our long journey's many stops, Prince Ptolemy
often told us how he believed Astronomy
disclosed the nights' sky as a kind of poetry.
Starward
