Garden Pennant

Caesar strides out upon the road, elegant; bejeweled.
The sun is his lamp, the flowers his perfume,
Africa and Gallia his gardens, that he ruled;
Wedded to an empire in its youth, in bloom.
Caesar lies upon the linens of dormancy,
Contemplating the spillage of righteous blood;
Outside, the squalor of Rome teems ruinously,
The hordes of poor weeping gold, as they could.
Tempests of lightning and thunder stride out on the sea,
Wreaking the hulls and bones of Rome’s behemoths,
Dashed against the isles, where the mist burns brightly, sickly,
In the pale gleam of Celtic frost and zeniths.

O ignoble Caesar, inglorious czar; tyrant,
Brutal lord with gold enthroned, bearing a thief’s pennant.