Arms, and the man…
Virgil
Christ almighty was that a year.
The damn war FINALLY over
though one many-faced hero heroed-on
ten more to slay a weaver’s suitors lined-up
and slicked-back on Ithaca Ave.
THAT year, warriors de-warriorized, or tried to.
Mothers had died fathers had died wives
husbands aunts uncles sisters brothers had died.
But not one golden-guy,
with eyes a glinty glint
and sweaty sweat on biceps bulging.
Sailing sea-y seas Aeneas ashored on land
of a lady founder
who took one gandy gander and
plunged into bicepboy’s eyes—not deep pools—
and after the jumping-off-joy—
no small joy we agree—was deady dead,
having lit sticks and self and such when
loverboy sailed again. Soon,
the city-on-a-boot he birthed,
Rome, all Latinated and lawyered up,
warriorized and empired, though,
we admit, the engineering was good.
Those aqueducts and bridges, those walls.
They were something else.
