There is that in God
which is not gaud
                                                feeding the chickens
Honorius muttered in Latin,
not brooking a report
that Rome
                had
how you say?
                                had been
like a chicken
                                its neck wrung.

Jesus, the beautiful faces,
Vestals,
the villas where Sallust
the beautiful noble stones
the shithouses, aqueducts, roads
                ROME DEAD?
but she fed the world
     a long time
                                fed
a line of law
and reason

Respect:
Lars Porsinna
and the bloody emperors
hairy Vandals
                                Alaric alert
Neal
All honor
her hills, her people,
her purple
covered the steppes,
commanded
the western isles.

Among the ruins
raindrops spatter
like pennies,
clattering on bronze
and marble alike.

We will not see Hadrian
again rebuilding the walls.