Caesar
I can't sleep so
I walk these crumbling walls
with a sputtering candle
burning the back
of my hand.
Jagged shadows -- memories --
Swirl on the walls be hind me.
Dead faces glance into my eyes.
I tremble.
I walk carefully among the ruins of my nation
Piecing together the hopes, dreams
Given me when I burst from my mother's womb.
I find myself wanting
the things
she promised
which I destroyed.
I hear a sound -- faces --
Dead in spirit, alive in body;
Their steel gropes for me.
I whirl to meet them, then ask
"Why not?"
And as Caesar falls
So falls Rome.
Not as a lion roaring into the wind
But as a child toppled into a well to drown
Its feeble cries unheard.
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