‘We exist only in the reflection of others.’
I was suddenly feeling very enlightened,
deep, and desperate to impress.
His lips puckered into a naturally
childish pout, reddish-brown, moist,
within kissable reach of mine,
and equally as fleshy. Long lashes, curly
as a newborn’s, were at odds with a forehead
fronting a skull of smoothed rock;
two vertical thinking lines crossed
his frowning horizontal ones,
and if thoughts were things,
they would be storm’d waves, not outside
but crashing inside the cliff face.
I ran a finger down his bristly cheek.
This was as real as it got –
I’d just shagged the bleedin’ emperor.
I wanted to scream out of the window,
do a frenzied dance in honour of Venus,
Glorious Queen of Love
(not the Glitzy Glamour Queen, but oh,
if she could see me now).
who had finally cast her spell on me.
After all these years, I had discovered
amore nihil mollius nihil violentius:
nothing is tamer or wilder than love.
‘Aiwa, this is how we know ourselves,’
he replied, and I realized that each word
he offered the world was coated in certainty:
Yes or No was the language of my leader.
His voice possessed the rumble of a mortal
who will become a god when he dies,
I could already hear him booming down
from Mount Olympus, I can see you-oo!
I sat up. ‘Who are you, Severus?’
I had discovered the miracle of love-making,
which dissolved the toughest carapace;
yesterday the question
would have been impertinent,
tonight it was simply – intimate.
He sighed. ‘I am what I have to be.’
His breath suffused the room
with a sudden gust of melancholia.
‘Who I really am is lost.
Was I that boy who went to the Temple of Apollo
and against music of night waves,
Whose father said, “Dream and it will manifest.”
But when I replied, “Daddums, I will be emperor,”
he scoffed, “Are you mad? A Libyan? My son?”
Soon after I read fine words of Virgil,
who is noster maximus poet, of course.’
(‘Of course,’ I echoed, a tad too quickly.)
‘They can because they think they can.
I spent every night for years
visualizing myself wearing crown of laurels.
When at last time came to wear
what Picts call Real McCoy, it was simply
a case of what Gauls call déjà vu.
I had dream, Zuleika, that one day all peoples
on earth would be my subjects,
not just nine thousand k’s of Europe,
North Africa and Middle Eastern territory,
but all those far-away tribes
of whom we know little or nothing.
Was I that boy who wrote poems in Punic
about homegrown gods Melqart and Shadrapa,
before he did similar in Greek and Latin?
Was I that boy who discovered that colonia
and great ambition spelt husband and wife,
but colonia and fulfilled ambition spelt divorce?
past crumbling boulevards, white colonnades,
past purple bougainvillea, and out into harbour,
past my waving familia, past the lighthouse,
past vision of salt caravans of camels
and nomads in the distant desert, traipsing
en route to hinterland to trade
with the kingdoms of the south,
while I headed north into great Mediterranean,
destined for HQ of think-tanks, spin doctors,
banks, commercial hubbub, intelligentsia,
and general razza-mattaza di Roma.’
He paused, arms folded
across his chest, black curls thinning
out as they trailed down to his belly button –
a lumpen warrior’s knot.
I sat cross-legged, exposing myself,
what did I have to offer this giant among men
but my body?
He closed his eyes,
trying to recollect events of so long ago.
I wanted to remake my town
with bright stones and glass!
Oh, to fill his pause with my truth,
but Felix’s refrain haunted me, still,
silence is a woman’s best adornment –
and I wasn’t going to blow it tonight.
My own dream had been blown away,
as soon as my father heard it.
My girlish world was all colours and shapes,
a robe with fuschia stripes,
green cat’s eyes blazing in a night alley,
the imperial beauty of the basilica.
Poems were meant to fulfil me instead,
but I failed to create pictures
with my words – or did I?
If he took me to Rome, to the desert … maybe …
His nomadic eyes settled on me,
so tenderly, as if my thoughts
had been spoken, and heard. I wanted to cry.
He stretched languorously, arched his back,
ribcage like the hull of a barge, protruding
through tautened skin.
He raised his muscled brown arms
to the ceiling – a messy old scar ran down
the inside of his left forearm,
like boiled goatskin. I wanted to stroke it.
He folded them behind his head,
cleared his throat. ‘On road to omnipotence
legate and finally governor.’
Pride and defiance infused every word.
‘But I returned home often.
Lepcis is colonia, but prosperous one,
our vast olive groves produce world’s finest.
That boy is the father of man before you,
who was ridiculed on arrival in Eternal City
because of his thick African accent.
Today he is icon to sixty million subjects
(give or take few hundred thousand),
yet he drinks potion of acidic nectar. Cheers!
To Managing Director of six hundred
squabbling, back-stabbing Board of Directors
running international Firm on Palatine Hill,
including other Africans who supported
that traitorous Tunisian dog, Clodius Albinus;
who became self-styled MD
while Governor of Britannia, committed
hari kari when hemmed in by my troops,
who removed his brain from his bollocks
and I, yes I, personally trampled
on his headless corpse with my stallion
until he was smashed chicken
(fitting end for coward).
He chuckled as if recalling a humorous anecdote,
then his eyes swiftly shifted from ceiling to mine,
and speared me – all metal,
running cold down my spine, then melting,
molten liquid, flowing into the scoop of the bowl
between my hips. He took my hand
(if I could blush), a kitten’s paw in a bear’s,
rubbed my palm, suddenly dug a nail into it,
bloody hard. I held his gaze,
but flinched inside, flushed.
‘Strong-arm tactics respected, worldwide.
Twenty-six senators executed for consulting
astrologer about my life expectancy,
five imperators killed year I took over Firm:
Commodus, Pertinax, Julianus, Niger
and Odious Clodius. Septic Sev,
they sneer behind my back. I ask you –
should leader be like lamb or lion?’
Somewhere over my left shoulder,
had appeared an audience. All the men
in my life did this, as if their words
were too important for my ears alone.
This was well rehearsed, over and over again
he had justified his position,
‘I am tired, Zuleika, tired of barbarians
clawing at my frontiers after good life,
tired of freedom-fighters, secessionists,
revolutionaries, seditious governors,
break-away factions, religious fantasists,
martyrs, spys, pirates and jumped-up
officers plotting to coup d’état me.
I am tired of hearing
Sevva! Sevva! Sevva! Out! Out! Out!
What do we want? Freedom!
When do we want it? Now!
2, 4, 6, 8!
Who should we exterminate?
This nonsense droning on in the distance
when I am trying to have my midday nap.
There are myriad descriptions
for these bastards, though I have just the one.’
He paused, twinkling, cueing me in.
‘What’s that?’ I obliged.
‘A pain in the bloody arse, my dear.
You see, I have simple motto:
Give army pay rise and sod everyone else.
Vanquished will protest, I do not blame them.
Enough! I am man of few words
and it has been long time
since I gave potted history to stranger.
It is like life flashing before my eyes.’
He closed his, for a second time,
I had ceased momentarily to exist. I rose,
threw on my silver nightgown, the marble
floor cooling my sweaty, sticky feet,
quietly opened the door. Two guards
were stationed outside it, invisible
yet omnipresent, my house
had been overrun by his Illyrian Guard.
I was a spectre, floating past, ostensibly
unnoticed, something yet nothing.
Be honest, Zeeks,
for all your pathetic poetic pretensions,
you’re jus’ a likkle housewife,
and to coin a phrase from Venus the Penis,
you’ll not never be nuffink else.
I returned with a flagon of Dom Falernum
poured each of us a goblet.
‘This,’ he announced, alert again,
‘is best sparkling vinum in the world.
Bubbles come from must pressed
underground close to cold-water streams.
So you see, my dear, this is not plonk.
I bring only best gifts for such charming girl.’
‘Cheers! Here’s to longevity,’ I toasted,
raising my goblet.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed.
‘Life and death. Who is winner?
Why can’t Caledonians surrender?
I have only penetrated to Moray Firth,
morale is low, my soldiers hate the cold.
I will have Scotland. All ginger-heads
will come under my jurisdiction,
but they are bellicose buggers, have resisted
for two hundred years, are worse
than those bible-bashers in the east –
we are the chosen ones and thou shalt not
or you’ll burn in hell unless you pray
to our three-for-the-price-of-one prophet.
You stamp out one lot, another pops up.
I am their ill wind. Only death will curtail me.’
He suddenly turned his back to me,
curled into a tight ball, a soft, maudlin voice
emerged, almost melodramatic:
‘If I should die, think only this of me, Zuleika,
Two toms hissed outside the window,
a barking pack of dogs raced
through the streets, way off I heard
the hypnotic drums of an all-night ritual,
the first cock crowed by the stream.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, pressing
myself into his back.
‘We believe in the stars in Africa,
and omens. Before I left for Britannia,
the stars said I will never return home.
Up north, an Ethiop with legion of Moors
at Hadrian’s Wall waved garland
of cypress boughs at me.
It is terrible luck. He laughed in my face:
You have overthrown all things, conquered
all things, now be a conquering god.
Later I was in town to make offering
at Temple of Mithras, more Ethiops
were brought for sacrifice.
Get them away, I shouted. Bad omen!’
I slipped an arm around his hot midriff,
his body solid; I had never felt such quiet
physical power, unlike Felix,
who was like a sack of luke-warm water
‘Am I not the deepest of them all?’ I whispered.
He turned around, wrapped me
in his legs and arms like a warm bundle.
‘You are pulcherrima babe.
You bring good luck.’
He rubbed his chin into the groove of my neck,
placed a hand on each of my breasts,
I felt my nipples heat up, grow slowly
erect in his palms. I looked beyond
the window, blue was gradually replacing
black, the stars had faded away, the full
moon was tinged with a translucent glow
that sent an eerie light into the room,
casting a shadow on us both.