Member Poem

You held a sword to my husband's throat
outside the Colosseum. The sword was cardboard,
though your helmet shone. You made my husband plead,
"But I love my wife!" before you let him go.

This after you had kissed my hand and stared into my eyes
and melted me, and we had mimed Victory and Death
for throngs of cheering cameras. After you spared my husband,
you posed Victory with him too, and he did his best.

Round the Colosseum we saw other centurions, with bald patches
and Ugg boots, offering, in tired voices, pictures.
Not one was like Tomasso with his sword and his drama.

Tomasso, handsome Tomasso! We passed you again
on the way back. "Goodbye, Tomasso, " I said.
"I love you. I don't love him any more."
"You never did," you riposted!
You bring pleasure to a hundred women per day, I know.

At the hotel: "If you could do that look that Tomasso did..."
It was our honeymoon. My husband tried, after I demonstrated the look,
which was all passion, all soul, all love since the worlds and stars
first danced and fought and died to entertain gods and goddesses.

Later my husband helped me to undress. He attended to
my medical needs, and I marvelled, as I do daily,
at this glorious man, more than man, my slave and also
my commander. The lift and free entry, at the Colosseum,
had been gifts from deities to me. A day of ease and worship,
for a disabled woman no longer young, but still a ruler.

Tomasso was tourist stuff, yes? But so much better than he
had needed to be. The emperor could ask no more of his finest officers.
I carry his face in my memory treasures, spoils of joy.
My husband is in there too, spared for me, and they are friends,
the centurion and the general of my empire.