Ab Urbe Condita Ad Urbem Obitam

The empire flees to Minerva's temple to beg solace,
her tyrian robes tattered, her bones, once stone,
then set with marble, then gilded, now cancerous,
her ribs crumbling in her chest.
She seeks the flashing-eyed goddess to weave
herself together again, to strategize for her
perishing days, for the goddess to kiss
the lead from her tongue and place a

mere sestertius to take back the Rubicon-
flooded centuries and revert to Stygian days.

Vesta's hearth has extinguished, her virgins
fled, Juno Monitus' warnings vanishing
into peacock luxury and eyespot wine.
So Rome seeks the oldest, gathering
her garments, mindful of Athens before
her, and placing her forehead to the floor,
and pleads for her life.
Minerva, azure goddess of wisdom,
bearing her aegis and spear, grants mortal
requests with stone austerity. Her olive-crowned
brow and mentoring words convey her
contained battlements. She observes,
dispassionate, the prostrate Rome,
her hair unbound and breast bruised in mourning.
She says not, rise, for your city shall endure,
for your people and language will be
spoken for millenia, for your Aeneas
and your Romulus and your Julius
will survive, persevering through seasons,
tides, the moons burning oil and
gladiatorial combat flickering across the stars,
you will live where my divinity lapses.
Nor does she embrace the dying city,
kiss her fallen coliseums and circenses,
her corroded aqueducts and slaughtered
orators, her mad emperors and exotic wine-dark
fabrics, and pray her second city
convalesced. There is not much power
left to her faded worship, but she whispers,
imperative,
(for there is no solace to be found in pleading a war-tempered deity)
live.