David Selzer | Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction » khaki shorts http://www.davidselzer.com Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:35:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 THE CLASSICAL TRADITION http://www.davidselzer.com/2010/02/the-classical-tradition/ http://www.davidselzer.com/2010/02/the-classical-tradition/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:07:08 +0000 David Selzer http://www.davidselzer.com/?p=721 'Lion', Babel, circa 583 BC

'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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