Posts Tagged khaki shorts
THE CLASSICAL TRADITION
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on February 22nd, 2010
'Lion', Babel, circa 583 BC
‘Arma virumque cano’ was birched
into pimply boys who ruled their thin red lines
at every degree. Till the sun set
on heart-shaped continents, DCs in the bush
carried Caesar in their khaki shorts. Gaul or
Matabele, order was where empire
prevailed. Rule of law is a state of mind.
Ovid exiled himself. Virgil wrote
two lines a day in his villa near Naples.
On unmapped plains, horsemen manoeuvred.
Their descendants herd goats. Power, I sing, and
illusion – managing a barbarous,
imperious language.
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