The fountain stammers and falls,
motion-activated, playing to the crowd.
The tourists are already lined up,
disgorged from the buses, on their cells.
Nearby, the field hasn’t been mowed:
Texas thistle, Indian blanket, winecup.
In the gift shop are swag and bling,
children’s books and the confessions of those
who damaged the world for a day
and wrote Now we act; now we are empires;
and while you are diligently studying
our reality, we will make a new reality.
But the wildflowers do not care,
and Caesar Augustus, who understood
a thing or two about reality,
loved a garden best when it was uninhabited.
That was the perfection of power,
for which reason he kept a fresco in his study
of two women, one of whom gathers
her hair at her nape in a knot
while the other turns away.
They have met by chance, but as he
sits at his desk, Augustus wonders
what the women are talking about,
their bodies so slender and mortal.
He really wants to know.
The voices are just a low hum,
like the bees in false yucca or poppy mallow.
How easily they defy him!
And this he understands as well.
English (US) · 