You craved for the Big Answer long ago,
among the cooling ember of your creed,
as hesitance, the ever growing seed
took root inside and never let you go.

You searched for Higher Knowledge far and wide;
Above the angled soaring of the dove,
Beyond the misty harbors down the cove,
And through the fickle swaying of the tide.

You’ll long for that Enlightenment till the end:
One morning, as you look upon the past
in fear that your next breath is the last,
you'll wonder if that time was yours to spend;

Or fate was just a roadblock to avoid
as every veil you lifted turned out void.

Cesar awakens with the crow of the roosters,
and he leans over a basin,
and he drenches his temples,
and he curses the Roman summer.
He sees his mocking reflection in the troubled water.
He barely recognizes himself.
He doesn't realize how tired he is.
From another room
comes the muffled whimper of a woman.
Cesar approaches.
Spread eagled over the bronze bed,
Calpurnia is sleeping.
Just as the previous night,
as every other night
she is having a bad dream.
Cesar remembers
the stillness of her gaze in the afternoon,
after they laid together,
when she begged him not to leave the house this morning
(I've had a bad omen, his wife said)
and smiles.
He loves her,
and he pities her.
He places his hand over that warm, milky skin.
Calpurnia has stopped moving.
Cesar walks away quietly,
without looking back.
He wears a spotless purple robe,
and some worn out sandals
that used to know Spain.
He gets down to his study
and takes breakfast standing.
His secretary, a sparse bearded Greek,
is waiting for him with a quill in his hand.
Cesar would like to handle
the excruciating minutiae
that come along with ruling an empire,
but a crucible of memories
has run aground in his mind
since he last saw that stranger
looking at him from the basin,
and won't let go:
The mosaics of Jupiter's temple,
The face of a crucified pirate,
The weeping of the daughters of the Gauls,
The roar of the Rubicon he left behind,
The hollow eye sockets in Pompey's head,
The Nile under the light of the stars.
Suddenly,
his loneliness overwhelms him
he doubts of everything,
and wonders if so much blood,
so much iron,
so much fire,
were really worth his while,
if it wouldn't have been better
to end his days as a feast for the crows
within the dust of Pharsalia.
That weakness lasts but a moment.
He then remembers Calpurnia's fears
and smiles for a second time.
He goes out to the street.
The morning is catching fire.
He starts walking towards the Roman forum.

Take me back to the pond of stagnant time,
back to the musky corners of the night,
back to the moon and its shimmering light,
back to the scourges of your grace sublime.

Back to the moment when the gap was bridged,
back when your silence consented my hand,
back when we laid on the ivory sand,
back when you pondered the depth of the ridge.

I did not know then (I could not have known),
your beacons were lit, the wind had not blown,
that Beauty had struck-- How dear the cost.

I look at myself, the scorched earth of Troy
And I cannot find a measure of joy
that once it was mine, and ever is lost.