The Lares and Penates by
Lucretius are hurled
out of the marble villas
to the sparse atomic world
where Neptune, Mars, and Venus
diminish on the screen
of the Roman nox with its safety locks
and the human light between.
The dead will not return again
to the forum of vast Rome
nor ever stroll at evening
by the marble of their home,
but speechless, ruined and extinct,
seethe in the Roman mould
while sunny clocks and rugged rocks
tick through the heat and cold.
Their ghosts will not revisit
the tragic or comic plays,
nor above stained arenas
watch bloody panthers graze
on gladiators with short swords
while the bored emperors lean
to crack a joke to the black cloak
Death sports behind the scenes.
The atoms clash and coalesce
beyond the Roman roads.
Their minimal shields and field of force
are stronger than the gods.
Eerie and grave in the vast wastes
where legions never go
they break, reform, attack and storm
the tents of Scipio.
Inventive, accidental,
the primitive desires
which feed the will of Caesar
and banked Cleopatra’s fires,
power Cicero’s orations
and the envy of the Gauls
and make the plebs howl like the tribes
which beset our city walls,
and make both Death and Love the brief
spasms of mindless will.
For there’s no Hades for proud ghosts
to stroll on asphodel
but only the huge silence
which falls when Rome will fade
from a single soul – and the state will roll
to irreversible shade.