His head is full of curls.
He makes my mind a-whirl.
He’s big and power-full
With the forearms of a bull.
His eyes are burning coals
That see into my soul.
It wasn’t exactly my magnum opus,
but, as I’d never written a love poem
before, I forgave myself, and started again.
I couldn’t get the most powerful man on earth
out of my mind. Nor could the town.
It was bursting with emperana: gossip-mongers
were pouring into the doctors with lock-jaw,
every social climber had their ladder out,
debutantes were doing new frocks and facials,
and every well-to-do matrona was assessing
the boobs and pubes of all eligible daughters
aged ten years upwards.
The town walked with a straight and proud back,
for not since Hadrian built the wall up north
had an emperor deigned to come west.
The city was no longer a minor
provincial backwater but could claim the label
Urbanus, Heartland of Imperium.
brave and loyal men); the wife,
Julia Domna, aka Mother of the Camp,
had not come with, and his courtesan,
Camilla, an aristocrat of thoroughbred
pedigree from Lower Britannia, renowned
as his official camp-bed follower,
was now persona non grata.
Alas, she had passed her sell-by-date.
Poor old Camilla, wandering minstrels
roamed village and town singing cheap
and completely gratuitous ditties
to news-starved plebs about how Camilla
was really no Helen of Troy, tra la la, fiddle di do,
she rather resembled the Horse of Troy,
tra la la, fiddle di do, tra la la, fiddle di oom
pa pa, oom pa pa, that’s how it goes,
oom pa pa oom pa pa, everyone knows
that she’d retired to her country estate
where she supervised the growth of parsnips,
trained horses for the equestrian games
and roamed incognito in the woods,
side-saddle on a pony.