PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Aboard the ship, you turn your face seaward

toward Rome.  At your back, aft, is Caesarea,

and beyond it the trouble some province

where nothing you know makes any sense any more.

Rome will welcome you back; Rome understands you,

and you understand Rome:  the wreckage of the Republic,

the adulteries, the conspiracies, the best of banquets and baths;

the policies of Tiberius and the politics of Sejanus,

despite the Senate and the People of Rome.  All of it is to be

preferred to the agitated turmoil of this land you are leaving,

and all of its upheavals:  the Centurion, who had commanded you,

now in love with a beautiful, long-haired boy, who is said to have been

once dead in some village---Nain?  was that the name---until raised

to life by a holy man, whom the Centurion later crucified, and who is

also said to be raised out of death to unending life.

Rome is calmer, more staid, compared to all that (behind you, aft, and

you will not look back).  No, Rome's temples, those shadowed spaces,

inhabited by the marbled statues of gods in silence and stillness,

will comfort you upon and after your arrival, your escape from

this troublesome country that believes God has walked there, was

murdered and resurrected there---and this they deem Good News there.

Starward